Deep Fault Drilling Project, Alpine Fault, New Zealand: Whataroa-Wanganui Passive Seismology Experiment 2010

The Alpine Fault is a globally significant plate-boundary fault that is thought to fail in large earthquakes (magnitude ~7.9) every 200400 years and to have last ruptured in 1717. Ongoing uplift along the Alpine Fault has rapidly exhumed rocks from depths of as much as 30 km, providing a young (<1 Myr), well-preserved, and globally unique sample of mid-crustal structures currently active at depth. a team of researchers proposed an ambitious experiment involving drilling into, sampling, and monitoring the Alpine Fault to investigate fault zone evolution, earthquake processes, and interaction between mineralizing fluids and fractured rocks.