U-070 - Surface Roughness on Nevada Fault Scarps
PI: Dr. Alexander Tye
Project Lead: Brendan Hodge
Funding Source: None
Location: Nevada
Dates: 2018-10-17 to 2018-10-18
Project Summary
Several workers have documented trends in TLS-derived surface roughness on exposed bedrock normal fault scarps where surface roughness increases in steps up a bedrock normal fault scarp exposed over multiple earthquakes. These variations in surface roughness have been attributed to different durations of weathering on patches of the scarp exposed during different earthquakes. Several authors have also used cosmogenic nuclide exposure ages on bedrock fault scarps to estimate slip rate over time and delineate the boundaries of scarp patches associated with specific earthquakes. We (Tye and Stahl, 2018) have shown that rock compressive strength as measured by a Schmidt hammer (a spring loaded piston that measures the rebound after striking a surface with an impact of known force) also increases in a stepwise fashion up a fault scarp. However, we found some discrepancy between the Schmidt hammer data and the surface roughness data.