Lisa Grant Ludwig

We conducted a paleoseismic study on the San Andreas fault (SAF) southeast of Cholame, California, to investigate the record of earthquakes along an 80-km paleoseismic data gap between Parkfield and the Carrizo Plain.

The spatial and temporal distribution of fault slip is a critical parameter in earthquake source models. Previous geomorphic and geologic studies of channel offset along the Carrizo section of the south central San Andreas Fault assumed that channels form more frequently than earthquakes occur and suggested that repeated large-slip earthquakes similar to the 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake illustrate typical fault behavior. We found that offset channels in the Carrizo Plain incised less frequently than they were offset by earthquakes.

Exposures we have excavated across the San Andreas fault contradict the hypothesis that part of the fault in the Carrizo Plain is unusually strong and experiences relatively infrequent rupture. The exposures record evidence of at least seven surface-rupturing earthquakes which have been approximately dated by accelerated mass spectrometry radiocarbon analysis of detrital charcoal and buried in situ plants.

Two monuments from an 1855 cadastral survey that span the San Andreas fault in the Carrizo Plain have been right-laterally displaced 11.0 ± 2.5 m by the 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake and associated seismicity and afterslip. This measurement confirms that at least 9.5 ± 0.5 m of slip occurred along the main fault trace, as suggested by measurements of offset channels near Wallace Creek.