Slip rate of the Calico fault: Implications for anomalous geodetic strain accumulation across the Eastern California shear zone

Recent earthquake activity and high geodetically derived fault-slip rates across the Eastern California shear zone motivate comparisons with long-term geologic deformation rates to test for transient strain accumulation. We report new geologic slip-rate results from a transect at 34.8° N across the central Mojave Desert where six dextral faults (Helendale, Lenwood, Camp Rock, Calico, Pisgah-Bullion, and Ludlow) accommodate all late Quaternary right-lateral displacement. High-resolution LIDAR topography data have been successfully acquired across all six faults as part of a project to measure a complete budget of long-term geologic fault slip rates. Field investigations of the northern Rodman Mountains conducted with the aid of the new topography data identified several surfaces dextrally offset by the Calico fault. A preliminary slip rate of 1.3±0.3 mm/yr is calculated from an 800± 200 m offset of alluvial fan deposits containing clasts of the ca. 600 ka Pipkin basalt flow. Cosmogenic surface exposure age dating of offset geomorphic surfaces and refined Ar/Ar dating of the basalt flow, in progress, will provide multiple constraints of this fault slip rate. The slip rate of the Calico fault is more than twice that of the Blackwater fault, located on strike with the Calico fault in the northwest Mojave Desert. This discrepancy supports that strain is transferred away from the Calico fault and other adjacent northwest-striking dextral faults onto domino-style rotating blocks bounded by sinistral faults in the Fort Irwin region. A newly identified active thrust fault and fault-related fold bounding the northern Rodman mountains accommodates shortening east of the Calico fault that may be caused by space problems at the intersection of these conjugate fault systems. Overall, slip rate on the Calico fault, together with existing paleoseismic histories on adjacent faults, does not account for more than 5 mm/yr of strain accumulation across the Eastern California shear zone. Geodetic strain rates of 10 mm/yr or more across this region indicate either province-wide transient strain accumulation or that paleoseismic data consistently underestimate long-term fault slip rates. Additional measurements of offset features for each fault that average several earthquake cycles are required to test these alternative hypotheses.