Paleoseismic transect across the northern Great Basin

Wesnousky, Steven G.; Barron, Andrew D.; Briggs, Richard W.; Caskey, S. John; Kumar, Senthil T.; Owen, Lewis A.

doi:10.1029/2004jb003283

Cited by 53 publications

(81 citation statements)

References 63 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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“…For example, fault scarps preserved in the Ruby Mountains and East Humboldt Range indicate latest slip at 7.6-4.8 ka (Wesnousky and Willoughby, 2003), and a fault scarp in the Pequop Mountains indicates the latest slip ca. 42 ka (Wesnousky et al, 2005). The most recent slip event is related to a 2008 M 6.0 earthquake along an east-dipping fault bordering the east side of the northernmost part of the East Humboldt Range and southern Snake Mountains Ponce et al, 2011).…”

Section: Paleogeography From Ca 3 Ma To Holocenementioning

confidence: 99%

“…2) responsible for uplift of the modern Ruby Mountains, East Humboldt Range, southern Snake Mountains, and Pequop Mountains (e.g., Mueller and Snoke, 1993a;Camilleri and Chamberlain, 1997;Colgan et al, 2010;McGrew and Snoke, 2015), some of which have Quaternary offset as well as recent earthquake activity (Wesnousky and Willoughby, 2003;Wesnousky et al, 2005;Ramelli and dePolo, 2011;. Today, remnants of the Ruby Mountains-East Humboldt detachment and early Ruby basin (i.e., sediment of the Humboldt Formation) are extensively exposed along the western margins of the Snake Mountains, Ruby Mountains, and East Humboldt Range, as well as in a topographic and structural embayment between the East Humboldt Range, Wood Hills, and southern Snake Mountains ( Fig.…”

Section: Granite Rangementioning

confidence: 99%

Middle Miocene to Holocene tectonics, basin evolution, and paleogeography along the southern margin of the Snake River Plain in the Knoll Mountain–Ruby–East Humboldt Range region, northeastern Nevada and south-central Idaho

2017

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New geologic mapping and tephrochronologic assessment of strata in extensional basins surrounding Knoll Mountain (Nevada, USA) reveal a geologic history linked to tectonic development of the Yellowstone hotspot and Snake River Plain to the north, and to the Ruby-East Humboldt-Wood Hills metamorphic core complex to the south. Data from these areas are utilized to present a paleogeographic reconstruction of northeastern Nevada-southcentral Idaho depicting the architecture of extensional faulting and basin development during collapse of the Nevadaplano over the past 17 m.y.Knoll Mountain is a northeast-trending horst along the southern margin of the Snake River Plain and track of the Yellowstone hotspot. The horst is bounded on the east by the Thousand Springs fault system and basin, and on the west by the Knoll Mountain fault and basin, where streams currently drain north into the Snake River Plain. The Knoll and Thousand Springs basins form half-grabens that are filled with the ca. 16 Ma to ca. 8-5 Ma Humboldt Formation, which was deposited in alluvial, eolian, and lacustrine environments during slip along range-bounding faults and a series of late-stage synthetic intrabasin faults. Structural, chronologic, and sedimentologic assessment of the Humboldt Formation in the Knoll basin indicates that it records overall southward fluvial drainage with slip along the Knoll Mountain fault beginning ca. 16 Ma and continuing to at least 8 Ma, and that between 8 and ca. 5 Ma, a west-dipping intrabasin fault system had developed. Between ca. 8-5 Ma to ca. 3 Ma, several fundamental changes took place, beginning with the cessation of faulting followed by widespread erosion that in turn was followed by deposition of older alluvium. The reversal of drainage direction from south to north flowing in the Knoll basin also took place during this time period, but its age relative to the widespread erosion or older alluvium is unknown.An integration of our work with previous studies north of Knoll Mountain reveal that the Knoll Mountain and intrabasin faults terminate to the north in the vicinity of the Jurassic Contact pluton, and that this area forms an accommodation zone separating broadly coeval and colinear faults bounding the ca. 10-8 Ma north-trending Rogerson graben, the northern end of which merges with the Snake River Plain. Furthermore, an integration of our work with previous work south of Knoll Mountain reveals that the Knoll Mountain fault formed part of a >190-km long, west-dipping fault zone that included the Ruby-East Humboldt detachment. This fault zone, which we refer to as the Knoll-Ruby fault system, had an extensive hanging-wall basin, the KnollRuby basin. The Knoll-Ruby fault system was a prominent structure facilitating collapse of the Nevadaplano in northeastern Nevada between ca. 16 and ca. 8-5 Ma, and its central part produced partial exhumation of high-grade, mid-crustal metamorphic rocks in the Ruby-East Humboldt-Wood Hills metamorphic core complex. By 8-5 Ma, during the waning stages of extension a...

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“…Interestingly, some of these records revealed considerable variations in the fault slip rates on a 10 4 years time scale (e.g. Wallace 1987;Byrd et al 1994;Friedrich et al 2003;Wesnousky & Willoughby 2003;Wesnousky et al 2005). Such highly variable faulting rates are difficult to reconcile with quasiperiodic earthquake recurrence models and lead to a new recurrence model that combines earthquake clustering on short time scales with uniform long-term strain accumulation (Wallace 1987).…”

Section: (B) Basin-and-range Provincementioning

confidence: 99%

Response of faults to climate-driven changes in ice and water volumes on Earth’s surface

Hampel

Hetzel

Maniatis

2010

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A.

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Numerical models including one or more faults in a rheologically stratified lithosphere show that climate-induced variations in ice and water volumes on Earth's surface considerably affect the slip evolution of both thrust and normal faults. In general, the slip rate and hence the seismicity of a fault decreases during loading and increases during unloading. Here, we present several case studies to show that a postglacial slip rate increase occurred on faults worldwide in regions where ice caps and lakes decayed at the end of the last glaciation. Of note is that the postglacial amplification of seismicity was not restricted to the areas beneath the large Laurentide and Fennoscandian ice sheets but also occurred in regions affected by smaller ice caps or lakes, e.g. the Basin-and-Range Province. Our results do not only have important consequences for the interpretation of palaeoseismological records from faults in these regions but also for the evaluation of the future seismicity in regions currently affected by deglaciation like Greenland and Antarctica: shrinkage of the modern ice sheets owing to global warming may ultimately lead to an increase in earthquake frequency in these regions.

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Paleoseismic transect across the northern Great Basin

Cited by 53 publications

References 63 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

Middle Miocene to Holocene tectonics, basin evolution, and paleogeography along the southern margin of the Snake River Plain in the Knoll Mountain–Ruby–East Humboldt Range region, northeastern Nevada and south-central Idaho

Response of faults to climate-driven changes in ice and water volumes on Earth’s surface

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