SCEC Award Number 12185 View PDF
Proposal Category Individual Proposal (Data Gathering and Products)
Proposal Title Determination of the slip rate of the northern San Jacinto fault using GPS
Investigator(s)
Name Organization
Gareth Funning University of California, Riverside
Other Participants Conrad, John
SCEC Priorities 1d, 4a, 1b SCEC Groups Geodesy, SoSAFE
Report Due Date 03/15/2013 Date Report Submitted N/A
Project Abstract
 The purpose of this project is to measure the geodetic slip rate of the northern San Jacinto fault, one of the most important structures accommodating Pacific-North America plate boundary deformation in southern California, using campaign-mode GPS. As a whole, the San Jacinto fault is currently considered the second most likely fault in southern California to experience a damaging (M>6.7) earthquake in the next 30 years (Field et al., 2009). Such an event could imperil several major population centers of the Inland Empire (such as the cities of Riverside and San Bernardino and their environs), which lie close to the mapped fault. Slip rates, which can be considered proxies for the rate of strain accumulation on faults, are a major input into seismic hazard models that aim to constrain the rates and probabilities of earthquake occurrence; therefore the robustness of seismic hazard estimates depends strongly on the robustness of the slip rates they employ.
Intellectual Merit This research tests the assumptions of the most recent version of the Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast, in particular, the predictions of along-strike changes in slip rate on the San Jacinto Fault. As such, it contributes to the SCEC aims of advancing understanding of seismic hazard in southern California.
Broader Impacts This study promotes training of a graduate student at UCR - it is designed to form part of a dissertation project for a graduate student under the supervision of the PI. The data we collect will be uploaded to the publicly available UNAVCO campaign GPS archive at no cost to the project, at the conclusion of the project, thus enabling the research of others, and enhancing research infrastructure. Possible societal benefits include the refinement and testing of predictions of the latest generation of the Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast, which is used to assess hazard and risk across California, and, in particular, by local and state governments to plan response and develop remediation strategies for earthquakes.
Exemplary Figure Figure 1: GPS locations from the 2013 campaign around the San Jacinto fault. Orange inverted triangles represent sites that are new, having been newly surveyed in 2013, while yellow represents sites that have been visited twice, and green have been visited at least three times since 2008. Red triangles are PBO and SCIGN continuously operated sites.
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