6 D1. Geophysical Insights and Applications: From the Mantle to the Near-Surface

Thursday, 1 April 2021
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
FMR, Inc. Room

INTERPRETATION OF LINEAMENTS AND FAULTS NEAR SUMMERVILLE, SOUTH CAROLINA, USA, USING LIDAR DATA: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE CAUSE OF THE 1886 CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA, EARTHQUAKE

Paper number: 6-7
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 3:05 PM – 3:25 PM

Authors

Abstract

LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data acquired near Summerville, South Carolina, revealed numerous lineaments trending in various directions across the Middleton Place-Summerville seismic zone (MPSSZ) and surrounding area. These lineaments are defined by linear depressions and stream valleys that are developed within late Eocene to Holocene marine, marginal marine, and fluvial sediments of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. The 40-km-long, ENE-WSW-oriented Deer Park lineament coincides with the Woodstock epicenter of the 1886 Charleston earthquake and crosses the South Carolina Railroad where the compressional deformation from the earthquake along the railway changed direction, suggesting that the main shock of the 1886 Charleston earthquake occurred along the Deer Park lineament. The coincidence of the 17-km-long, ENE-WSW-oriented Middleton Place lineament with a buried fault along USGS seismic-reflection line SC-10 suggests that too is a fault. Several E-W-oriented, south-facing geomorphic scarps are also located near the MPSSZ, including the E-W-oriented, south-facing McChune-Summerville scarp that may have resulted from uplift to the north along a Quaternary fault. Other lineaments east of the MPSSZ are associated with late Tertiary structural domes, indicating that the interpreted faults along these lineaments have been active during the late Cenozoic. The LiDAR data also revealed a 350-m dextral offset of a mid-Pleistocene beach ridge along the Woodstock fault northeast of Summerville and a 20-km-long, NW-SE-oriented Canterhill lineament that appears to be the surface expression of the Charleston fault.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 53, No. 2

doi: 10.1130/abs/2021SE-362176

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