Famous site, famous drawings: the San Andreas Fault in the Carrizo plains. Starting with this 3D sketch of geomorphic features characteristic of active strike-slip faulting. This come from the map of San Andreas Fault “active breaks” by Vedder and Wallace in 1970.
Multiple stream offsets at Wallace creek are so famous that it's difficult to find an uncommon drawing. Below is perhaps the first figure showing such multiple offsets, by Robert Wallace in 1968.
And the well-known sketch by Sieh and Jahns explaining the progressive accumulation of stream offsets, with the competition between fault rate and incision rate.
Several recent analytical studies focussed on measuring and dating those offsets. Recently the aim of such studies was to test ideas and models about characteristic earthquakes and seismic cycles (see for ex. the two papers by Liu-Zeng, Klinger et al.).
UPDATE 1: After I tweeted those Wallace's sketches, R. Arrowsmith posted a link to an OpenTopography poster with the high-resolution topography (50 cm pixel) made with LIDAR. Below is a view of this fantastic DEM, with Wallace Creek on the left.
I managed to put Wallace's 1968 sketch and LIDAR topography side by side and at the same scale. See below. Wallace's “presient” (to take Arrowsmith's words) work was indeed very precise !
The link to retrieve LIDAR topography is https://goo.gl/2BjTFp . Thanks to Ramon Arrowsmith & OpenTopography
UPDATE 2: also reacting to my tweets Ron Schott suggested this impressive drone footage of Wallace Creek site.
- Wallace, R. E. (1968). Notes on stream channels offset by the San Andreas fault, southern Coast Ranges, California. In Conference on Geologic Problems of the San Andreas Fault System. Stanford University Publication in Geological Sciences (Vol. 11, pp. 6-21).
- Vedder, J. G., & Wallace, R. E. (1970). Map showing recently active breaks along the San Andreas and related faults between Cholame Valley and Tejon Pass, California (No. 574).
- Sieh, K. E., & Jahns, R. H. (1984). Holocene activity of the San Andreas fault at Wallace creek, California. Geological Society of America Bulletin, 95(8), 883-896.
- Liu, J., Klinger, Y., Sieh, K., & Rubin, C. (2004). Six similar sequential ruptures of the San Andreas fault, Carrizo Plain, California. Geology, 32(8), 649-652.
- Liu‐Zeng, J., Klinger, Y., Sieh, K., Rubin, C., & Seitz, G. (2006). Serial ruptures of the San Andreas fault, Carrizo Plain, California, revealed by three‐dimensional excavations. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 111(B2).
