Earthquake geology

Synchronous earthquakes on multiple fault segments have larger magnitudes than isolated ruptures.

Determining where those fault segment boundaries are, and how often they are breached in earthquakes, is less clear. Using field mapping, GPS and Total Station surveying, GPR, trenching, Quaternary geochronologic techniques, and kinematic/stress modelling, I try to figure out the typical and maximum magnitudes that can be expected from a fault system.

This work is important in light of the most complex surface-rupturing earthquake ever documented, the 2016 Mw 7.8 Kaikoura Earthquake in New Zealand. Work is on-going to determine how all of these faults ‘communicated’ in this event.

NSF EAR Postdoctoral Fellowship: Late Quaternary slip rate and paleoseismicity of the Sevier Desert Detachment: earthquake hazards of a low-angle normal fault

This work was conducted with Nathan Niemi at the University of Michigan. We are interested in using terrestrial cosmogenic nuclides (TCN), LiDAR, UAV photogrammetry, trenching and field mapping to date recent earthquakes and measure fault slip rates around the Wasatch Fault Zone and faults of the Sevier Desert, Utah.

Interestingly, what started as a project to determine slip rates on a low-angle normal fault has wound up being about magma-assisted rifting at the eastern margin of the Basin and Range. You can read some of our results, open access, here.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number (NSF Grant Number 1451466)

Above: Sharon Hornblow (Otago Regional Council) cleaning a trench wall of the Fox Peak fault, Canterbury, New Zealand