T231 Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquakes: Geologic, Geophysical, and Modeling Constraints on Rupture Timing and Process

Wednesday, 13 October 2021
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Portland Ballroom 257 (Hybrid Room)

PALEOSEISMIC SURF AND TURF: UPDATES FROM THE USGS POWELL CENTER CASCADIA EARTHQUAKE WORKING GROUP ON SYSTEMATIC INTEGRATION OF ONSHORE AND OFFSHORE RECORDS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS

Paper number: T231-15
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 4:55 PM – 5:10 PM

Authors

Abstract

The lack of historic seismicity along the Cascadia subduction zone (CSZ) fuels the uncertainty of the megathrust rupture process and resulting hazards in the US and Canadian Pacific Northwest. Diverse types of paleoseismic proxies uniquely record different aspects of the earthquake rupture process. Thus, margin-wide integration of paleoseismic proxy records leverages these unique transcripts to provide a richer understanding of past earthquake variability in time and space. In a series of virtual workshops, the USGS Powell Center research group on CSZ earthquake science and hazards have compiled paleoseismic records of coseismic coastal land-level change, tsunami inundation, and ground shaking proxies such as landslides, liquefaction, and turbidites. To consistently integrate different datasets, we constructed ranking schemes to quasi-quantitatively evaluate the quality of geochronologic age control and certainty of earthquake evidence at 49 coastal land level change sites, 81 tsunami sites, 76 terrestrial paleoseismic shaking sites, and 13 marine paleoseismic shaking sites. At each site, we evaluated how well geochronologic samples and results (14C dates, stratigraphy, geological context etc.) constrain the timing of candidate earthquake events. Similarly, we applied an evidence quality ranking scheme to assess how certain the observations of coastal land-level change, tsunami inundation, and strong ground motion were the result of a CSZ megathrust earthquake source. We also focused on historic records of non-local events, such as the 1964 Alaska earthquake and the 1992 Cape Mendocino earthquake, to identify the characteristics of distal subduction zone earthquakes and small local events, respectively, in the paleoseismic record. In the future we plan to identify the likely rupture characteristics of major CSZ earthquakes during the Holocene and to synthesize paleoseismic, geophysical, and instrumental datasets to identify the existence and persistence of rupture boundaries along the subduction zone.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 53, No. 6

doi: 10.1130/abs/2021AM-367923

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