Determination of earthquake early warning parameters, τc and Pd, for southern California

We explore a practical approach to earthquake early warning in southern California by determining a ground-motion period parameter  τ _c   and a high-pass filtered displacement amplitude parameter Pd from the initial 3 s of the P waveforms recorded at the Southern California Seismic Network stations for earthquakes with M > 4.0. At a given site, we estimate the magnitude of an event from  τ _c   and the peak ground-motion velocity ( PGV ) from Pd . The incoming three-component signals are recursively converted to ground acceleration, velocity and displacement. The displacements are recursively filtered with a one-way Butterworth high-pass filter with a cut-off frequency of 0.075 Hz, and a P -wave trigger is constantly monitored. When a trigger occurs,  τ _c   and Pd are computed. We found the relationship between  τ _c   and magnitude ( M ) for southern California, and between Pd and PGV for both southern California and Taiwan. These two relationships can be used to detect the occurrence of a major earthquake and provide onsite warning in the area around the station where onset of strong ground motion is expected within seconds after the arrival of the P wave. When the station density is high, the methods can be applied to multistation data to increase the robustness of onsite early warning and to add the regional warning approach. In an ideal situation, such warnings would be available within 10 s of the origin time of a large earthquake whose subsequent ground motion may last for tens of seconds.     

Stratigraphy and 40Ar/39Ar geochronology of the Santa Rosa basin,Baja California: Dynamic evolution of a constrictional rift basin during oblique extension in the Gulf of California

The Santa Rosa basin of northeastern Baja California is one of several transtensional basins that formed during Neogene oblique opening of the Gulf of California. The basin comprises Late Miocene to Pleistocene sedimentary and volcanic strata that define an asymmetric half‐graben above the Santa Rosa detachment, a low‐angle normal fault with ca. 4–5 km of SE‐directed displacement. Stratigraphic analysis reveals systematic basin‐scale facies variations both parallel and across the basin. The basin‐fill exhibits an overall fining‐upward cycle, from conglomerate and breccia at the base to alternating sandstone‐mudstone in the depocentre, which interfingers with the fault‐scarp facies of the detachment. Sediment dispersal was transverse‐dominated and occurred through coalescing alluvial fans from the immediate hanging wall and/or footwall of the detachment. Different stratigraphic sections reveal important lateral facies variations that correlate with major corrugations of the detachment fault. The latter represent extension‐parallel folds that formed largely in response to the ca. N‐S constrictional strain regime of the transtensional plate boundary. The upward vertical deflection associated with antiformal folding dampened subsidence in the northeastern Santa Rosa basin, and resulted in steep topographic gradients with a high influx of coarse conglomerate here. By contrast, the downward motion in the synform hinge resulted in increased subsidence, and led to a southwestward migration of the depocentre with time. Thus, the Santa Rosa basin represents a new type of transtensional rift basin in which oblique extension is partitioned between diffuse constriction and discrete normal faulting. ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar geochronology of intercalated volcanic rocks suggests that transtensional deformation began during the Late Miocene, between 9.36 ± 0.14 Ma and 6.78 ± 0.12 Ma, and confirms previous results from low‐temperature thermochronology (Seiler et al., 2011). Two other volcanic units that appear to be part of a conformable syn‐rift sequence are, in fact, duplicates of pre‐rift volcanics and represent allochthonous, gravity‐driven slide blocks that originated from the hanging wall.     

Depositional and tectonic evolution of a supradetachment basin: 40Ar/39Ar geochronology of the Nova Formation, Panamint Range, California

The Nova Basin contains an upper Miocene to Pliocene supradetachment sedimentary succession that records the unroofing of the Panamint metamorphic core complex, west of Death Valley, California. Basin stratigraphy reflects the evolution of sedimentation processes from landslide emplacement during basin initiation to the development of alluvial fans composed of reworked, uplifted sections of the basin fill. ⁴⁰Ar/³⁹Ar geochronology of volcanic units in middle and lower parts of the sequence provide age control on the tectonic and depositional evolution of the basin and, more generally, insights regarding the rate of change of depositional environments in supradetachment basins. Our work, along with earlier research, indicate basin deposition from 11.38 Ma to 3.35 Ma. The data imply sedimentation rates, uncorrected for compaction, of ~100 m Myr⁻¹ in the lower, high-energy part to ~1000 m Myr⁻¹ in the middle part characterized by debris-flow fan deposition. The observed variation in sediment flux rate during basin evolution suggests that supradetachment basins have complex depositional histories involving rapid transitions in both the style and rate of sedimentation.