On Offset Stream Measurements and Recent Coseismic Surface Rupture in the Carrizo Section of the San Andreas Fault

Recent studies using airborne laser swath mapping (ALSM) topographic data have provoked debate about whether the Mw 7.9 Fort Tejon 1857 earthquake produced ~5m or ~10m of surface strike-slip displacement in the Carrizo section of the south-central San Andreas fault. Resolution of this discrepancy is important not only for understanding the proposed role of the Carrizo section in controlling repeated south-central San Andreas rupture but also for understanding the general utility of stream offset measurements for earthquake process studies. To explore if higher-resolution topographic data of the offset features would help reconcile the different interpretations, we used a mobile laser scanning (MLS) backpack-mounted system to survey 11 ~5m offset streams given 'high' quality rankings by previous studies. In our surveys, point density was on the order of 1000s pts/m^2 in comparison to 1-4 pts/m^2 for the ALSM data, enabling us to faithfully make digital elevation models with grid spacing smaller than 10cm. We adapt a geometric method that relies on a small number of user-dependent decisions to produce an offset estimate from a set of geomorphic markers (thalweg, channel margins, channel shoulders) from upstream and downstream locations. We typically derive an ensemble of at least 10 offset measurements per stream channel and from these calculate a mean and standard deviation. We also explore using gradient changes in long profiles of the offset stream reaches to diagnose the possibility of a ~10m channel experiencing 2 ~5m slip events. Preliminary results suggest a tendency towards the higher value offset estimates, although this does not necessarily preclude the possibility of two or more events causing the cumulative offset.