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Near-field deformation from the El Mayor-Cucapah earthquake revealed by differential LIDAR

Michael E. Oskin, Ramon R. Arrowsmith, Alejandro Hinojosa-Corona, Austin J. Elliott, John M. Fletcher, Eric J. Fielding, Peter O. Gold, Jose Javier Gonzàlez-Garcìa, Kenneth W. Hudnut, Jing Liu-Zeng, & Orlando J. Teran

Published February 10, 2012, SCEC Contribution #1486

Large [moment magnitude (Mw) ≥ 7] continental earthquakes often generate complex, multifault ruptures linked by enigmatic zones of distributed deformation. Here, we report the collection and results of a high-resolution (≥nine returns per square meter) airborne light detection and ranging (LIDAR) topographic survey of the 2010 Mw 7.2 El Mayor–Cucapah earthquake that produced a 120-kilometer-long multifault rupture through northernmost Baja California, Mexico. This differential LIDAR survey completely captures an earthquake surface rupture in a sparsely vegetated region with pre-earthquake lower-resolution (5-meter–pixel) LIDAR data. The postevent survey reveals numerous surface ruptures, including previously undocumented blind faults within thick sediments of the Colorado River delta. Differential elevation changes show distributed, kilometer-scale bending strains as large as ~10^3 microstrains in response to slip along discontinuous faults cutting crystalline bedrock of the Sierra Cucapah.

Citation
Oskin, M. E., Arrowsmith, R. R., Hinojosa-Corona, A., Elliott, A. J., Fletcher, J. M., Fielding, E. J., Gold, P. O., Gonzàlez-Garcìa, J., Hudnut, K. W., Liu-Zeng, J., & Teran, O. J. (2012). Near-field deformation from the El Mayor-Cucapah earthquake revealed by differential LIDAR. Science, 335(6069), 702-705. doi: 10.1126/science.1213778.