Holocene slip rate and earthquake recurrence of the northern Calaveras Fault at Leyden Creek, northern California

Abstract

The northern Calaveras fault traverses a heavily populated area in the eastern San Francisco Bay region and has not had a large earthquake in more than 130 years. To obtain data on the number, timing, and recurrence of large paleoearthquakes, we conducted paleoseismologic investigations at Leyden Creek, which crosses the fault in the rugged southern East Bay Hills. The site is characterized by a prominent west facing scarp and five fluvial terraces on the western (upstream) side of the fault. On the eastern (downstream) side of the fault, the creek flows through a narrow bedrock canyon that constricts the modern valley and has constrained the location of a late Pleistocene paleovalley. The margin of a buried bedrock valley west of the fault trends nearly perpendicular to the fault and is offset 54 (+18, −14) m in a right‐lateral sense from the narrow bedrock canyon. Based on radiocarbon ages for alluvial sediments predating and postdating this paleovalley margin, we estimate an age of 11.5 (+3, −1) ka for the valley margin and a Holocene slip rate of 5 ± 2 mm/yr for the fault at Leyden Creek. Slickensides exposed in multiple trenches across the fault show that the most recent movement was predominantly lateral with a minor component of down‐to‐the‐west slip. Multiple displaced scarp‐derived colluvial deposits are interpreted as results of five or six surface ruptures within the past 2500 years. Twenty‐one radiocarbon samples from scarp‐derived colluvium and interfingered alluvial deposits suggest an average interval between surface rupture earthquakes of 250 to 850 years.