1. Near-Field Deformation from the El Mayor-Cucapah Earthquake Revealed by Differential LIDAR.
- Author
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Oskin, Michael E., Arrowsmith, J. Ramon, Corona, Alejandro Hinojosa, Elliott, Austin J., Fletcher, John M., Fielding, Eric J., Gold, Peter O., Garcia, J. Javier Gonzalez, Hudnut, Ken W., Liu-Zeng, Jing, and Teran, Orlando J.
- Subjects
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EARTHQUAKES , *SURFACE fault ruptures , *OPTICAL radar , *GEOLOGICAL strains & stresses , *RIVER sediments , *GEOLOGICAL surveys , *GEOLOGIC faults - Abstract
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 fenine returns per square meter) airborne light detection and ranging (LIDAR) topographic survey of the 2010 /Mw 12 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 ~10³ microstrains in response to slip along discontinuous faults cutting crystalline bedrock of the Sierra Cucapah. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2012
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