The Growth of Geological Structures by Repeated Earthquakes 2. Field Examples of Continental Dip‐Slip Faults

Abstract

A strong test of our understanding of the earthquake cycle is the ability to reproduce extant fault‐bounded geological structures, such as basins and ranges, which are built by repeated cycles of deformation. Along strike‐slip faults, the coseismic and interseismic deformation can be nearly equal in magnitude and opposite in sign, resulting in little permanent deformation except for the fault offset. For dip‐slip faults, portions of the crust are lifted and dropped, and so buoyancy forces are exerted. The seismic and interseismic deformations do not balance, and structures grow and become subject to erosion and deposition. We consider three examples for which the structure and fault geometry are well known: the White Wolf reverse fault in California, site of the 1952 Kern County M=7.3 earthquake, the Lost River normal fault in Idaho, site of the 1983 Borah Peak M=7.0 earthquake, and the Cricket Mountain normal fault in Utah, site of Quaternary slip events. Basin stratigraphy and seismic reflection records are used to profile the structure, and coseismic deformation measured by leveling surveys is used to estimate the fault geometry. To reproduce these structures, we add the deformation associated with the earthquake cycle (the coseismic slip and postseismic relaxation) to the flexure caused by the observed sediment load, treating the crust as a thin elastic plate overlying a fluid substrate. The cumulative deformation is principally dependent on the elastic plate thickness, modestly sensitive to the sediment‐substrate density difference, and insensitive to the fluid viscosity for the 4‐ to 8‐Ma structures. We deduce a longterm flexural rigidity of 2–15 × 1019 Nm; this is equivalent to an elastic plate thickness of 2–4 km for a Young's modulus of 2.5 × 1010 Nm−2. This value is found where independent estimates of the elastic thickness from the coherence between surface topography and gravity yield values of about 4 km, but where coseismic fault slip extends to a depth of 10–15 km. Thus much of the seismogenic crust must weaken substantially during the life of active faults, causing the fault‐bounded basins to narrow over time.