Interactions between active faults in southern California
Collaborators: Sally McGill, Tom Rockwell, Paula Figueiredo
Students: Drake Kerr
Funding: Southern California Earthquake Center
We have been working to better understand plate boundary fault interactions and associate seismic hazards. This has led to several projects focused on the San Jacinto fault zone and it's relation to the San Andreas:
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1. Determining the pattern and history of large earthquakes over the past 4000 years on the San Jacinto (see 2013 and 2018 publications).
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2. Evaluating short-term variations in slip-rate using the northern San Jacinto fault as an example. (see 2015 publication)
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3. Studying where and how displacement transfers between the two most active faults in southern California. We are looking at the Cajon Pass "earthquake gate" where the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults merge (in progress).
Records of prehistoric ruptures suggest that The Cajon Pass acts as an "earthquake gate", where some ruptures pass through on the San Andreas fault, some stop, and some transfer to (or from) the northern San Jacinto fault. We are investigating the late Holocene history of surface rupture on the northern San Jacinto fault zone to see how this "earthquake gate" might work and where slip transfer takes place.
Looking NW up Lytle Creek along the Glen Helen strand of the northern San Jacinto fault.
