Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America; October 2002; v. 92; no. 7;
p. 2551-2554; DOI: 10.1785/0120000600
© 2002 Seismological Society of America
Introduction to the Special Issue on Paleoseismology of the San Andreas Fault System
Lisa B. Grant and
William R. Lettis
Department of Environmental Analysis and Design
University of California
Irvine, California 92697-7070
lgrant@uci.edu
(L.B.G.)
William Lettis & Associates, Inc.
1777 Botelho Drive, Suite 216
Walnut Creek, California 94596
lettis@lettis.com
(W.R.L.)
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Purpose
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The purpose of this special issue of BSSA is to provide a
state-of-the-science compendium of data on the rupture history of the San
Andreas fault from recent paleoseismic investigations. The San Andreas fault
is the primary boundary fault between the Pacific and North American plates
and one of the most thoroughly studied faults in the world. Fourteen articles
prepared by 74 authors provide dates of surface ruptures and/or measurements
of slip or slip rate at 10 paleoseismic investigation sites along the main
trace of the San Andreas fault, at one site on the Hayward fault, and along
the northern San Jacinto fault. This issue includes documentation of the
longest multicycle earthquake sequence in Californiaand possibly in
North America (14 ruptures at the Wrightwood site). Geographic coverage
extends almost along the entire San Andreas fault system, from Bodega Bay in
northern California to the Mecca Hills in the Coachella Valley. The issue also
includes articles linking paleoseismic data with modern instrumental
recordings of ground motion and seismicity.
Data on the earthquake history of the San Andreas fault form the basis of
numerous models of fault behavior and calculations of seismic hazard. Despite
the relatively large amount of data available for the San Andreas fault, there
remain unresolved questions about segmentation, the rupture patterns of large
earthquakes, and characteristics of earthquake recurrence. The data presented
in this special issue contribute toward understanding the spatial and temporal
rupture history of the San Andreas fault over multiple rupture cycles during
the last few hundred to few thousand years. This is the timescale of greatest
interest for seismic hazard assessments and fault modeling.
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Summary
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This introduction provides an overview of the issue and summarizes results
in simplified, tabular form. Table
1 contains dates . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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Copyright © 2002 by the Seismological Society of America.