Exciting news! We're transitioning to the Statewide California Earthquake Center. Our new website is under construction, but we'll continue using this website for SCEC business in the meantime. We're also archiving the Southern Center site to preserve its rich history. A new and improved platform is coming soon!

Group B, Poster #260, SCEC Community Models (CXM)

The SCEC Community Paleoseismic Database (CPD)

Scott T. Marshall, Sinan O. Akciz, Alex Hatem, Mei-Hui Su, Philip J. Maechling, Tran T. Huynh, & Edric Pauk
Poster Image: 

Poster Presentation

2022 SCEC Annual Meeting, Poster #260, SCEC Contribution #12172 VIEW PDF
Paleoseismic observations provide critical information for seismic hazard assessments, geophysical/geodetic modeling, earthquake simulators, geologic studies, and many other efforts in earthquake research. These observations include dates and rates of earthquake recurrence, fault slip rates, and measurements of surface slip per earthquake that can be used to determine the spatial and temporal rupture patterns of surface rupturing earthquakes over multiple seismic cycles. In other countries where active faults pose significant hazards (e.g., Italy, Spain, New Zealand, and Japan), existing paleoseismic information is often available online as databases that are spatially referenced and queryab...le. In contrast, paleoseismic data compilations in the U.S. are commonly shared in pdf and/or Excel formats, are not queryable or interactive, and often are included in peer-reviewed publications that are not open access. This has led some investigators, many of whom are not paleoseismologists, to spend hours creating and maintaining their own ad-hoc paleoseismology compilations. To facilitate access to existing paleoseismic data for faults within southern California, we are developing a SCEC Community Paleoseismic Database (CPD). The CPD will be a queryable database with an interactive map-based interface. Building on compilations gathered by the USGS, UCERF, and SCEC researchers (notably in the Salton Trough region) and leveraging web-based applications already developed for the SCEC Community Models, the CPD will be cross-referenced with the SCEC Community Fault Model (CFM) so that observations from each paleoseismic study location will be associated with the corresponding CFM fault. The CPD will include both earthquake chronology and geologic slip rate data, as well as associated metadata (including references). Phase 1 of the project will focus on a limited number of sites with peer-reviewed datasets and/or that appear in the recent earthquake geology inputs for the U.S. National Seismic Hazard Model. The CPD data and metadata will not only be queryable, but also downloadable as plain text (.csv) and Google Earth (.kml) files. The SCEC CPD will unify delivery of paleoseismic data that previously would have required multiple searches on numerous platforms. We encourage the SCEC community to visit our poster and discuss what features would be of most interest to potential users of the CPD.
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