South Island Seismology at the Speed of Light Experiment (SISSLE)

Brief description

This record was harvested by RDA at 2026-06-25T16:10:27.739809+10:00 from NCI's Data Catalogue where it was last modified at 2026-01-23.

Full description

The South Island Seismology at the Speed of Light Experiment (SISSLE) deployed distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) on two dark telecommunication fibres near Haast, South Westland, New Zealand, to investigate the Alpine Fault—a major plate-boundary fault with a well-documented history of large earthquakes. DAS data were collected during two deployment periods, from February to April 2023 and from October to November 2023, using a Silixa iDAS2 interrogator enabled by AuScope. The experiment utilised two fibre connections extending north and southeast of Haast. SISSLE-001 refers to the southern array, which runs along the Haast Pass Highway and crosses the active Alpine Fault, with a recorded length of approximately 30 km at a channel spacing of 4 m. SISSLE-002 refers to the northern array, which runs mostly parallel to the Alpine Fault and the Tasman Sea coastline, with a recorded length of approximately 18 km at a channel spacing of 4 m. In conjunction with the DAS deployment, a SmartSolo nodal array (FDSN network code: 2B) was deployed, with increased station density near the Alpine Fault.

Credit

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of Te Rūnaka o Makaawhio and the Haast community for this research and ongoing Alpine Fault studies. The contributions of colleagues from Chorus NZ Ltd and Crown Infrastructure Partners, Downer technicians, and the Australian National University (ANU) are also much appreciated. This project was enabled by AuScope, NCI and the Australian Government via the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS): https://www.auscope.org.au

Lineage

References: Meghan S. Miller, John Townend, Voon Hui Lai; The South Island Seismology at the Speed of Light Experiment (SISSLE): Distributed Acoustic Sensing Across and Along the Alpine Fault, South Westland, New Zealand. Seismological Research Letters 2024; 96 (3): 2065–2078. doi: https://doi.org/10.1785/0220240322 A partial subset of the SISSLE experiment was also published via the ANU Data Commons: https://doi.org/10.25911/rnhb-vw10