SCEC Award Number 20053 View PDF
Proposal Category Individual Proposal (Integration and Theory)
Proposal Title A machine readable paleoseismic event database: toward improving long-term earthquake predictability in southern California
Investigator(s)
Name Organization
Cody Routson Northern Arizona University Nicholas McKay Northern Arizona University
Other Participants
SCEC Priorities 5b, 5c, 1a SCEC Groups Geology, EFP, SAFS
Report Due Date 03/15/2021 Date Report Submitted 03/15/2022
Project Abstract
 Paleoseismic records are used to estimate earthquake recurrence rates, earthquake magnitude, and earthquake offsets, which are important for understanding seismic risk. Extensive work has been done toward constraining the spatial and temporal variability of past rupture events on major fault systems in southern California. However, a systematic data framework and rupture event storehouse would improve accessibility and facilitate analyses of the frequency and spatial correlation of rupture events. Here we worked toward developing a database of southern California paleoseismic events in a metadata rich, machine-readable format. A unified, machine-readable database will enable analyses toward developing a paleoseismic event model to study fault and rupture dynamics, enable regional correlation with paleoclimate, and to improve long-term predictability of southern California earthquakes.
Intellectual Merit Over the past decade paleoclimate science has made substantial advances in developing a common-machine readable paleoclimate data format known as Linked Paleo Data (LiPD). Paleoseismic data are identical in many aspects to paleoclimate data, and with small modifications, the LiPD format can be leveraged by paleoseismology to facilitate a ‘big data’ approach to estimating seismic return intervals.
Broader Impacts Southern California earthquakes have major implications for infrastructure and human safety. This project focused toward developing a framework that brings paleosismic data together in a way that can be quickly and easily analyzed. Together, paleoseismic data from the site-¬level (rupture offsets, event timing, and event frequency) to the regional scales (event frequency, rupture lengths, and earthquake gates) are useful for quantifying risk and improving earthquake rupture forecasts.
Exemplary Figure Figure 3. Spatial distribution of the formatted paleoseismic sites. Colors show the number of recorded events by site. Numbers refer to the site identification number in table 1.