Holocene slip rates along the Owens Valley fault, California: Implications for the recent evolution of the Eastern California Shear Zone

Lee, Jeffrey; Spencer, Joel Q.G.; Owen, Lewis A.

doi:10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029<0819:hsrato>2.0.co;2

Cited by 78 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…This technique has been successfully applied to dating deformed sediments for palaeoseismic studies in the western USA (e.g. Machette et al 1992;Crone et al 1997;Rockwell et al 2000;Lee et al 2001;Kent et al 2005;Wesnousky et al 2005) and elsewhere in the world (e.g. Owen et al 1999;Washburn et al 2001).…”

Section: Vale Meão Winery Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

Palaeoseismology of the Vilariça Segment of the Manteigas-Bragança Fault in northeastern Portugal

Rockwell¹,

Fonseca

Madden³

et al. 2009

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The Manteigas-Bragança fault is a major, 250-km-long, NNE-striking, sinistral strike-slip structure in northern Portugal. This fault has no historical seismicity for large earthquakes, although it may have generated moderate (M5þ) earthquakes in 1751 and 1858. Evidence of continued left horizontal displacement is shown by the presence of Cenozoic pull-apart basins as well as late Quaternary stream deflections. To investigate its recent slip history, a number of trenches were excavated at three sites along the Vilariça segment, north and south of the Douro River. At one site at Vale Meão winery, the occurrence of at least two and probably three events in the past 14.5 ka was determined, suggesting an average return period of about 5-7 ka. All three events appear to have occurred as a cluster in the interval between 14.5 and 11 ka, or shortly thereafter, suggesting a return period of less than 2 ka between events within the cluster. In the same area, a small offset rill suggests 2 -2.5 m of slip in the most recent event and about 6.1 m after incision below a c. 16 ka alluvial fill event along the Douro River. At another site along the Vilariça River alluvial plain, NE of the Vale Meão site, several trenches were excavated in late Pleistocene and Holocene alluvium, and exposed the fault displacing channel deposits dated to between 18 and 23 ka. In a succession of closely spaced parallel cuts and trenches, the channel riser was traced into and across the fault to resolve c. 6.5 m of displacement after 18 ka and c. 9 m of slip after c. 23 ka. These observations yield a slip rate of 0.3-0.5 mm/a, which is consistent with earlier estimates. Combining the information on timing at Vale Meão winery and displacement at Vilariça argues for earthquakes in the M7þ range, with coseismic displacements of 2 -3 m. This demonstrates that there are potential seismic sources in Portugal that are not associated with the 1755 Lisbon earthquake or the Tagus Valley, and, although rare, large events on the Vilariça fault could be quite destructive for the region. This work provides an analogue for the study of active faulting in intracontinental settings and supports the view that earthquakes within intracontinental settings tend to cluster in time. In addition, this study highlights the usefulness and application of multiple field, remote sensing and geochronological techniques for seismic hazard mitigation.

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Section: Vale Meão Winery Sitementioning

confidence: 99%

Palaeoseismology of the Vilariça Segment of the Manteigas-Bragança Fault in northeastern Portugal

Rockwell¹,

Fonseca

Madden³

et al. 2009

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“…This rate by definition is less than the present day rate if the fault is accelerating (Figure 2). In general, we expect that geologic rates averaged over Holocene time should be similar to present day geodetic rates, unless there is complex temporal behavior, or earthquake cycle effects bias the geodetic measurement (Dixon et al, 2003;Johnson et al, 2007), or if the fault is spatially complex and some deformation is missed in the geologic study (Lee et al, 2001). South of the Hunter Mountain fault, deformation may be partitioned between the Panamint Valley fault, a shallow, west dipping oblique slip fault that crops out on the east side of the valley, and more steeply dipping or vertical right lateral strike slip faults to the west, within the valley, such as the Ash Hill fault (Densmore and Anderson, 1997;Walker et al, 2005).…”

Section: Geologic Background and Previous Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Acceleration and evolution of faults: An example from the Hunter Mountain–Panamint Valley fault zone, Eastern California

Gourmelen

Dixon

Amelung

et al. 2011

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

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We present new space geodetic data indicating that the present slip rate on the Hunter Mountain-Panamint Valley fault zone in Eastern California (5.0±0.5 mm/yr) is significantly faster than geologic estimates based on fault total offset and inception time. We interpret this discrepancy as evidence for an accelerating fault and propose a new model for fault initiation and evolution. In this model, fault slip rate initially increases with time; hence geologic estimates averaged over the early stages of the fault's activity will tend to underestimate the present-day rate. The model is based on geologic data (total offset and fault initiation time) and geodetic data (present day slip rate). The model assumes a monotonic increase in slip rate with time as the fault matures and straightens. The rate increase follows a simple Rayleigh cumulative distribution. Integrating the rate-time path from fault inception to present-day gives the total fault offset.

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“…Johnson and Segall (2004) also extended the Savage and Prescott (1978) model to include the localized creep on a linear viscous shear zone within the upper elastic layer. Geographic distribution of the 15 strike-slip faults considered in this study: (1) Alpine, (2) Altyn Tagh, (3) Dead Sea, (4) Elsinore, (5) Fairweather, (6) Garlock, (7) Karakoram, (8) SAF-Mojave, (9) North Anatolian, (10) Owens Valley, (11) Philippine, (12) SAF-Carrizo, (13) SAF-Indio, (14) San Jacinto, and (15) Haiyuan (Sharp, 1967(Sharp, , 1981Savage and Burford, 1973;Plafker et al, 1978;Sieh and Jahns, 1984;Lubetkin and Clark, 1988;Rockwell et al, 1990;Barrier et al, 1991;Lisowski et al, 1991;Merifield et al, 1991;McGill and Sieh, 1993;Beanland and Clark, 1994;Duquesnoy et al, 1994;Petersen and Wesnousky, 1994;Bennett et al, 1996Bennett et al, , 1997Armijo et al, 1999;Beavan et al, 1999;Lasserre et al, 1999;Bendick et al, 2000;Klinger et al, 2000;Reilinger et al, 2000;Argus and Gordon, 2001;Lee et al, 2001;Miller et al, 2001;Niemi et al, 2001;Norris and Cooper, 2001;Banerjee and Bürgmann, 2002;Brown et al, 2002;Hubert-Ferrari et al, 2002;Fletcher and Freymueller, 2003;Meghraoui et al, 2003;Lacassin et al, 2004;…”

Section: Constraining Time-dependent Earthquake-cycle Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inference of Multiple Earthquake-Cycle Relaxation Timescales from Irregular Geodetic Sampling of Interseismic Deformation

Meade

Klinger

Hetland

2013

Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America

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Characterizing surface deformation throughout a full earthquake cycle is a challenge due to the lack of high-resolution geodetic observations of duration comparable to that of characteristic earthquake recurrence intervals (250-10,000 years). Here we approach this problem by comparing long-term geologic slip rates with geodetically derived fault slip rates by sampling only a short fraction (0.001%-0.1%) of a complete earthquake cycle along 15 continental strike-slip faults. Geodetic observations provide snapshots of surface deformation from different times through the earthquake cycle. The timing of the last earthquake on many of these faults is poorly known, and may vary greatly from fault to fault. Assuming that the underlying mechanics of the seismic cycle are similar for all faults, geodetic observations from different faults may be interpreted as samples over a significantly larger fraction of the earthquake cycle than could be obtained from the geodetic record along any one fault alone. As an ensemble, we find that geologically and geodetically inferred slip rates agree well with a linear relation of 0:94 0:09. To simultaneously explain both the ensemble agreement between geologic and geodetic slip-rate estimates with observations of rapid postseismic deformation, we consider the predictions from simple two-layer earthquake-cycle models with both Maxwell and Burgers viscoelastic rheologies. We find that a two-layer Burgers model, with two relaxation timescales, is consistent with observations of deformation throughout the earthquake cycle, whereas the widely used two-layer Maxwell model with a single relaxation timescale, is not, suggesting that the earthquake cycle is effectively characterized by a largely stressrecoverable rapid postseismic stage and a much more slowly varying interseismic stage.

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Holocene slip rates along the Owens Valley fault, California: Implications for the recent evolution of the Eastern California Shear Zone

Cited by 78 publications

References 13 publications

Palaeoseismology of the Vilariça Segment of the Manteigas-Bragança Fault in northeastern Portugal

Palaeoseismology of the Vilariça Segment of the Manteigas-Bragança Fault in northeastern Portugal

Acceleration and evolution of faults: An example from the Hunter Mountain–Panamint Valley fault zone, Eastern California

Inference of Multiple Earthquake-Cycle Relaxation Timescales from Irregular Geodetic Sampling of Interseismic Deformation

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