SCEC Award Number 13136 View PDF
Proposal Category Collaborative Proposal (Data Gathering and Products)
Proposal Title Collaborative Research: Expansion of the stratigraphic and paleoearthquake record at the Elizabeth Lake paleoseismic site, central Mojave section of the San Andreas fault
Investigator(s)
Name Organization
Sean Bemis University of Kentucky James Dolan University of Southern California Kate Scharer United States Geological Survey
Other Participants 2 graduate students and 1 undergraduate
SCEC Priorities 2, 4, 4 SCEC Groups Geology, SoSAFE, WGCEP
Report Due Date 03/15/2014 Date Report Submitted N/A
Project Abstract
 Despite the recent development of several high-quality paleoseismic records for sites on the southern San Andreas fault (Figure 1), the distance between some of these sites remains too great to reliably test models of earthquake behavior and understand possible persistent segmentation of earthquake ruptures. Because the earthquake record from Bidart Fan (Akçiz et al., 2010) and Frazier Mountain are very similar (Figure 2), but quite different from that of Pallett Creek (Scharer et al., in review), in 2012 we began new paleoseismic investigations at Elizabeth Lake, CA. This location splits a 100 km gap between Pallett Creek and Frazier Mountain that is large enough to generate its own M7 earthquakes, and the site has the stratigraphic potential to provide important constraints on the extent and timing of ruptures along the Mojave section of the southern San Andreas fault over the past >2000 years (Bemis et al., 2013). We have determined a record of up to five earthquakes that occurred between ca. 100 – 1500 A.D. However, we have not located the most recent ~500 years of the record.
Intellectual Merit Although we employ largely traditional paleoseismological techniques, the paleoearthquake data collected for the Elizabeth Lake paleoseismic site will make an important contribution to the patterns of earthquake timing and length along the southern San Andreas fault. And as a result, this will provide new constraints on the models of earthquake recurrence that are based upon the extensive paleoseismic data for this fault.
Broader Impacts Our research at Elizabeth Lake has not only brought in students from UK and USC as project participants, but also several USGS and SCEC interns and volunteer graduate students from UMass Amherst and UC Davis. The significant majority of these project participants during 2013 were women and all students regardless of gender benefited from mentorship by our USGS collaborator, Dr. Kate Scharer. With the ability to integrate our results with the extensive paleoseismic data for the southern San Andreas fault, we expect our data to benefit the residents of southern California through improved earthquake forecasts and the broader community through improved understanding of earthquake recurrence behavior.
Exemplary Figure Figure 5