Geology topics

Robert M. Sare

Publications and source records attributed to Robert M. Sare.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2022

Mountain rivers reveal the earthquake hazard of geologic faults in Silicon Valley

The 1989, M w = 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake resulted in tens of lives lost and cost California almost 3% of its gross domestic product. Despite widespread damage, the earthquake did not clearly rupture the surface, challenging the identification and characterization of these hidden hazards. Here, we show that they can be illuminated by inverting fluvial topography for slip-and moment accrual-rates—fundamental components in earthquake hazard assessments—along relief-generating geologic faults. We applied this technique to thrust faults bounding the mountains along the western side of Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area, and discovered that these structures may be capable of generating a M w = 6.9 earthquake every 250–300 years based on moment accrual rates. This method may be deployed broadly to evaluate seismic hazard in developing regions with limited geological and geophysical information.

California↗

USGS2020

Coexisting seismic behavior of transform faults revealed by high-resolution bathymetry

Transform faults are known to have anomalously low rates of seismicity, but no direct observations reveal why this is the case. We use new, autonomous underwater vehicle high-resolution seafloor mapping to image the morphology of and offsets along transform fault segments in the Gulf of California. Fault splays display a varied history of activation and deactivation of individual fault strands over time, not unlike those mapped onshore or imaged within the bathymetry of the Queen Charlotte-Fairweather and the Palos Verdes faults of offshore western Canada and Southern California. A series of six identically offset depositional fans evidence 21–23 meters of slip along the main transform fault, which could not have been produced by a single earthquake. Rather, the lack of smaller-magnitude offsets indicates synchronous deposition and an absence of multiple slope failure-inducing earthquakes, thus providing the first direct evidence that creep and earthquakes occur at different times in the slip history of a given transform fault segment.

Geology↗

USGS2018

Establishing chronologies for alluvial-fan sequences with analysis of high-resolution topographic data: San Luis Valley, Colorado, USA

On active alluvial fans, debris-flow deposits and frequent avulsions produce a rough topographic surface. As is the case in many initially rough landforms produced by catastrophic processes, the topography of alluvial fans is progressively smoothed, producing textural differences useful in establishing relative age criteria for fans. Here, we outline an approach for defining a quantitative, numerical chronology for the surfaces of alluvial fans from topographic analysis, although the method is generalizable to any arbitrary landform. Our chronology relies on predictions for the evolution of topography by purely diffusive modification. Specifically, by comparing the surface roughness of active and abandoned alluvial-fan surfaces measured from spectral transformations of topography, we can directly estimate a fan’s “morphologic age,” which is the product of the duration and efficiency of diffusive modification by surface processes. We tested the method on a suite of alluvial fans in the San Luis Valley, Colorado, USA, and evaluated the results against field observations and available geochronologic data. Estimated morphologic ages obey stratigraphic constraints and imply reasonable efficiencies of sediment transport. We highlight the fact that the oldest fan surfaces observed here, constrained to be older than 100 ka by U-series dating of pedogenic carbonates, have morphologic ages near the method’s saturation point. In addition, many fans have morphologies that are not entirely consistent with a purely diffusive modification from the initial fan morphology recorded on active fan surfaces, likely as a result of postdepositional modification by sediment transport driven by wind and overland flow. However, we remain optimistic that morphologic dating can provide useful insights into the history of alluvial-fan activity, in particular, because our method provides a means for both computing a morphologic age and assessing the validity of the assumptions required for that computation from analysis of topography alone.

California↗