Exceptional Scarp Preservation in SW Namibia Reveals Geological Controls on Large Magnitude Intraplate Seismicity in Southern Africa

Abstract

Namibia (and SW Africa in general) is considered to be a stable continental region (SCR) with little history of significant earthquakes. Within Namibia, instrumentally recorded earthquakes are restricted to smaller than M w 5.5 (ISC, 2022, Figure 1). Earthquakes recorded in international catalogs reveal a band of seismicity along the west coast within the Namaqua-Natal and Damara belts (Figure 1a, inset). In contrast, the region underlain by the Proto-Kalahari craton appears largely aseismic. Limited network coverage prevents the confident identification of clusters of microseismicity and long-term Global Positioning System (GPS) constraints on strain rates are also