U.S. Geological Survey Final Technical Report Award No. G12AP20066 Recipient: University of California at Santa Barbara Mapping the 3D Geometry of Active Faults in Southern California Craig Nicholson1, Andreas Plesch2, John Shaw2 & Egill Hauksson3 1Marine Science Institute, UC Santa Barbara 2Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, Harvard University 3Seismological Laboratory, California Institute of Technology Principal Investigator: Craig Nicholson Marine Science Institute, University of California MC 6150, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-6150 phone: 805-893-8384; fax: 805-893-8062; email:
[email protected] 01 April 2012 - 31 March 2013 Research supported by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Department of the Interior, under USGS Award No. G12AP20066. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors, and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Government. 1 Mapping the 3D Geometry of Active Faults in Southern California Abstract Accurate assessment of the seismic hazard in southern California requires an accurate and complete description of the active faults in three dimensions. Dynamic rupture behavior, realistic rupture scenarios, fault segmentation, and the accurate prediction of fault interactions and strong ground motion all strongly depend on the location, sense of slip, and 3D geometry of these active fault surfaces. Comprehensive and improved catalogs of relocated earthquakes for southern California are now available for detailed analysis. These catalogs comprise over 500,000 revised earthquake hypocenters, and nearly 200,000 well-determined earthquake focal mechanisms since 1981. These extensive catalogs need to be carefully examined and analyzed, not only for the accuracy and resolution of the earthquake hypocenters, but also for kinematic consistency of the spatial pattern of fault slip and the orientation of 3D fault surfaces at seismogenic depths.