Study area
The Akatore Fault is the most seismically active area on the southeast coast of New Zealand’s South Island (Figure 1). The onshore portion of this fault has, in the past millennium, uplifted an approximately 30 km of the coast by 2-3 meters above the high-tide zone (Litchfield and Norris 2000). This amount of coastal uplift is reported to be sufficient to eliminate intertidal species and potentially create empty habitats for recolonization (Jaramillo et al. 2012; Hamling et al.2017). Radiocarbon dating at the Akatore fault line has constrained the most recent rupture event to 800-1000 yr BP (Litchfield & Norris 2000; Craw et al. 2020). Additional radiocarbon dating from sea caves at the palaeo-hightide level similarly provided age estimates <1000 years old, confirming direct relationships between earthquake and coastal uplift (Craw et al. 2020; Parvizi et al. 2020).