Definition of Benioff zone
geology
:a seismically active underground area within a subduction zone
- Researchers say today's type of quake …, or Benioff zone, earthquake, is the most frequent and potentially most benign of the types of earthquake in the region.
- —Carol Kaesuk Yoon, New York Times, 1 Mar. 2001
- A seismic zone dipping beneath a continental margin or an island arc, and having a deep-sea trench as its surface expression, is called a Benioff zone, after Hugo Benioff, the American seismologist who first described the feature.
- —Sheldon Judson and Marvin E. Kauffman, Physical Geology, 8th Edition, 1990
