Sub-crustal earthquakes within the Australia-Pacific plate boundary zone beneath the Southern Alps, New Zealand

•We report focal mechanisms of sub-crustal earthquakes in a continental collision zone.•Earthquakes and tremor indicate along-strike variation of the plate boundary at depth.•The average size, frequency and depth of the sub-crustal events increase southward.•Our results are consistent with a previous model of a remnant passive margin at depth.

Sub-crustal earthquakes have been observed sporadically for ∼40 years in the central South Island of New Zealand. We report on 20 events recorded between December 2008 and February 2012 near the Alpine Fault in the continental collision zone between the Australian and Pacific plates. A subset of 18 events at depths of 47-74 km occurs south of Mt. Cook and together with recently reported tremor locations indicates along-strike variations in deformation behaviour along the plate boundary. The sub-crustal earthquakes south of Mt. Cook increase in depth, frequency and size southwards towards the Puysegur subduction zone. Focal mechanisms could be determined for 14 earthquakes and exhibit predominantly strike-slip and reverse faulting solutions. Stress inversion analysis of the focal mechanisms yields a stress field favouring oblique-reverse faulting. We interpret the geographic and vertical distributions of these sub-crustal events in relation to a previously proposed tectonic model of a remnant passive margin that formed south of New Zealand in the Eocene and was overridden when dextral strike-slip motion initiated on the Alpine Fault. We infer that sub-crustal earthquakes occur along the leading edge of this structure, which is attached to the continental Australian crust.