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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (8 results)

  • Thesis
  • Peer Reviewed
UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2014)

The work presented in my dissertation focuses on the crustal deformation during the co- and postseismic periods in earthquake cycles. I use geodetic and seismic data to constrain and better understand the behavior of the earthquake source during the coseismic period. For the postseismic period, I use geodetic data to observe the surface displacements from centimeter-scale to millimeter-scale from an Mw 7.9 and Mw 6.9 event, respectively. I model different mechanisms to explain the postseismic deformation and to further constrain the crustal and upper mantle rheology.

For the coseismic earthquake source study, I explore the source of the 2010 Mw 6.3 Jia-Shian, Taiwan earthquake. I develop finite-source models using a combination of seismic data (strong motion and broadband) and geodetic data (InSAR and GPS) to understand the rupture process and slip distribution of this event. The main shock is a thrust event with a small left-lateral component. Both the main shock and aftershocks are located in a transition zone where the depth of seismicity and an inferred regional basal detachment increases from central to southern Taiwan. The depth of this event and the orientation of its compressional axis suggest that this event involves the reactivation of a deep and weak pre-existing NW-SE geological structure.

The 1989 Mw 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake provides the first opportunity since the 1906 San Francisco (Mw 7.9) earthquake to study postseismic relaxation processes and estimate rheological parameters in the region with modern space geodetic tools. The first five years postseismic displacements can be interpreted to be due to aseismic right-oblique fault slip on or near the coseismic rupture, as well as thrusting up-dip of the rupture within the Foothills thrust belt. However, continuing transient surface displacements (≤ 5 mm/yr) until 2002 revealed by PSInSAR and GPS in the northern Santa Cruz Mountains may indicate a longer-term postseismic deformation. I model the viscoelastic relaxation of the lower crust and upper mantle following the Loma Prieta earthquake to explain the surface displacement. A 14-km-thick lower crust (16 - 30 km depth) viscosity of > 1019 Pa s and an upper mantle viscosity of ~1018 Pa s best explain the geodetic data. The weak upper mantle viscosity in this area is in good agreement with upper mantle rheology in southern California (0.46 - 5 × 1019 Pa s) using a similar approach from studying the postseismic deformation following the 1999 (Mw 7.1) Hector Mine earthquake.

Periods of accelerated postseismic deformation following large earthquakes reflect the response of the Earth's lithosphere to sudden coseismic stress changes. I investigate postseismic displacements following the 2008 Wenchuan (Mw 7.9), China earthquake in eastern Tibet and probe the differences in rheological properties across the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. Based on nearly two years of GPS and InSAR measurements, I find that the shallow afterslip on the Beichuan Fault can explain the near-field displacements, and the far-field displacements can be explained by a viscoelastic lower crust beneath Tibet with an initial effective viscosity of 4.4 × 1017 Pa s and a long-term viscosity of 1018 Pa s. On the other hand, the Sichuan Basin block has a high-viscosity upper mantle (> 1020 Pa s) underlying an elastic 35-km-thick crust. The inferred strong contrast in lithospheric rheologies between the Tibetan Plateau and the Sichuan Basin is consistent with models of ductile lower crustal flow that predict maximum topographic gradients across the Plateau margins where viscosity differences are greatest.

With additional 6-year-long continuous GPS measurements deployed in the eastern Tibetan Plateau and the Sichuan Basin, viscoelastic relaxation models with the same geometry setups suggests Tibetan lower crust with an initial effective viscosity of 9 × 1017 Pa s and steady-state viscosity of 1019 Pa s. I also use the laboratory experiments derived power law flow model to fit the postseismic deformation. The viscosity estimated from this model varies with material parameters (e.g. grain size, water content, etc.) as well as environmental parameters (temperature, pressure, background strain rate, etc.). The diffusion creep refers to the power law flow mainly controlled by the mineral grain size, and the dislocation creep refers to it mainly controlled by the background stress level.For a diffusion creep type of power law flow, a Tibetan crust composed of wet feldspar (water content = 1000 H/106Si; grain size = 1 - 4 mm) and upper mantle composed of wet olivine (water content = 200 H/106Si; grain size = ~2 mm) can predict the 6-year-long poseismic time series well. This result roughly agrees with rock mechanics laboratory experiments.The channel flow model predicts the plateau margins are steepest where the viscosity of the surrounding blocks are highest. The low viscosity in the Tibetan lower crust and the contrasting rheology across the plateau margin derived from postseismic deformation are consistent with the channel flow model.

    Cover page: Crustal Deformation During Co- and Postseismic Phases of the Earthquake Cycle Inferred from Geodetic and Seismic Data
    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    UC Berkeley Previously Published Works (2016)
    Geodetically measured surface displacements are produced by a combination of underlying deformation processes acting at different spatial and temporal scales. A complete history of surface measurements in an area can help discriminate contributions from tectonic, hydrologic, and anthropogenic processes. In this study, we use Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images of the active mountain front and adjacent coastal plain of southwestern Taiwan to generate time series of surface deformation from 1995 to 2001 and from 2005 to 2008 based on the InSAR small baseline method. The InSAR measurements agree well with LOS motions estimated from continuous GPS measurements of 3D displacements between 2006 and 2008. A significant range increase in line of sight (LOS) is dominated by land subsidence in the coastal area of western and southwestern Taiwan. Subsidence rates vary with annual periods and are highly correlated with seasonal precipitation, which are likely associated with groundwater recharge and withdrawal. The long-term deformation is dominated by long-term tectonic loading in SW Taiwan during the interseismic period of the earthquake cycle, including elastic strain along or continuous creep on the active faults. Our results show the ability of InSAR to reveal spatiotemporal crustal deformation in western Taiwan with high spatial resolution and accuracy, which is potentially important for evaluating seismic hazards.
      Cover page: Fifteen years of surface deformation in Western Taiwan: Insight from SAR interferometry
      • Article
      • Peer Reviewed
      UCLA Previously Published Works (2021)
      The hazardous impact and erosive potential of slow-moving landslides depends on landslide properties including velocity, size, and frequency of occurrence. However, constraints on size, in particular, subsurface geometry, are lacking because these types of landslides rarely fully evacuate material to create measurable hillslope scars. Here, we use pixel offset tracking with data from the NASA/JPL Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar to measure the three-dimensional surface deformation of 134 slow-moving landslides in the northern California Coast Ranges. We apply volume conservation to infer the actively deforming thickness, volume, geometric scaling, and frictional strength of each landslide. These landslides move at average rates between ∼0.1–2 m/yr and have active areas of ∼6.10 × 103–2.35 × 106 m2, inferred mean thicknesses of ∼1.1–25 m, and volumes of ∼7.01 × 103–9.75 × 106 m3. The best fit volume-area geometric scaling exponent is γ ∼ 1.2–1.5, indicating that these landslides fall between typical soil and bedrock landslide scaling. A rollover in the scaling relationship suggests that the largest landslide complexes in our data set become large primarily by increasing in area rather than thickness. In addition, the slow-moving landslides display scale-dependent frictional strength, such that large landslide tend to be weaker than small landslides. This decrease in frictional strength with landslide size is likely because larger landslides are composed of higher proportions of weak material. Our work shows how state of the art remote sensing techniques can be used to better understand landslide processes and quantify their contribution to landscape evolution and hazards to human safety.
        Cover page: Inferring the Subsurface Geometry and Strength of Slow‐Moving Landslides Using 3‐D Velocity Measurements From the NASA/JPL UAVSARCreative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        UC Berkeley Previously Published Works (2018)
        The 2010Mw7.2ElMayor-Cucapah earthquake provides a unique target of postseismic study as deformation extends across several distinct geological provinces, including the coldMesozoic arc crust of the Peninsular Ranges and newly formed, hot, extending lithosphere within the Salton Trough. We use five years of global positioning system measurements to invert for afterslip and constrain a 3-D finite-element model that simulates viscoelastic relaxation. We find that afterslip cannot readily explain far-field displacements (more than 50 km from the epicentre). These displacements are best explained by viscoelastic relaxation of a horizontally and vertically heterogeneous lower crust and upper mantle. Lower viscosities beneath the Salton Trough compared to the Peninsular Ranges and other surrounding regions are consistent with inferred differences in the respective geotherms. Our inferred viscosity structure suggests that the depth of the Lithosphere/Asthenosphere Boundary (LAB) is ~65 km below the Peninsular Ranges and ~32 km beneath the Salton Trough. These depths are shallower than the corresponding seismic LAB. This suggests that the onset of partial melting in peridotite may control the depth to the base of the mechanical lithosphere. In contrast, the seismic LAB may correspond to an increase in the partial melt percentage associated with the change from a conductive to an adiabatic geotherm.
          Cover page: Inferred rheological structure and mantle conditions from postseismic deformation following the 2010 Mw 7.2 El Mayor-Cucapah Earthquake
          • Article
          • Peer Reviewed
          UC Berkeley Previously Published Works (2017)
          The 4 April 2010 Mw 7.2 El Mayor-Cucapah (EMC) earthquake in Baja, California, and Sonora, Mexico, had primarily right-lateral strike-slip motion and a minor normal-slip component. The surface rupture extended about 120 km in a NW-SE direction, west of the Cerro Prieto fault. Here we use geodetic measurements including near- to far-field GPS, interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR), and subpixel offset measurements of radar and optical images to characterize the fault slip during the EMC event. We use dislocation inversion methods and determine an optimal nine-segment fault geometry, as well as a subfault slip distribution from the geodetic measurements. With systematic perturbation of the fault dip angles, randomly removing one geodetic data constraint, or different data combinations, we are able to explore the robustness of the inferred slip distribution along fault strike and depth. The model fitting residuals imply contributions of early postseismic deformation to the InSAR measurements as well as lateral heterogeneity in the crustal elastic structure between the Peninsular Ranges and the Salton Trough. We also find that with incorporation of near-field geodetic data and finer fault patch size, the shallow slip deficit is reduced in the EMC event by reductions in the level of smoothing. These results show that the outcomes of coseismic inversions can vary greatly depending on model parameterization and methodology.
            Cover page: Fault geometry inversion and slip distribution of the 2010 Mw 7.2 El Mayor‐Cucapah earthquake from geodetic data
            • Article
            • Peer Reviewed
            UCLA Previously Published Works (2022)
            Rapid detection of landslides is critical for emergency response, disaster mitigation, and improving our understanding of landslide dynamics. Satellite-based synthetic aperture radar (SAR) can be used to detect landslides, often within days of a triggering event, because it penetrates clouds, operates day and night, and is regularly acquired worldwide. Here we present a SAR backscatter change approach in the cloud-based Google Earth Engine (GEE) that uses multi-temporal stacks of freely available data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 satellites to generate landslide density heatmaps for rapid detection. We test our GEE-based approach on multiple recent rainfall- and earthquake-triggered landslide events. Our ability to detect surface change from landslides generally improves with the total number of SAR images acquired before and after a landslide event, by combining data from both ascending and descending satellite acquisition geometries and applying topographic masks to remove flat areas unlikely to experience landslides. Importantly, our GEE approach does not require downloading a large volume of data to a local system or specialized processing software, which allows the broader hazard and landslide community to utilize and advance these state-of-the-art remote sensing data for improved situational awareness of landslide hazards.
              Creative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
              • Article
              • Peer Reviewed
              UCLA Previously Published Works (2023)
              On August 14, 2021, a Mw 7.2 earthquake struck the Tiburon Peninsula of western Haiti triggering thousands of landslides. Three days after the earthquake on August 17, 2021, Tropical Storm Grace crossed shallow waters offshore of southern Haiti triggering more landslides worsening the situation. In the aftermath of these events, several organizations with disaster response capabilities or programs activated to provide information on the location of landslides to first responders on the ground. Utilizing remote sensing to support rapid response, one organization manually mapped initiation point of landslides and three automatically detected landslides. The 2021 Haiti event also provided a unique opportunity to test different automated landslide detection methods that utilized both SAR and optical data in a rapid response scenario where rapid situational awareness was critical. As the methods used are highly replicable, the main goal of this study is to summarize the landslide rapid response products released by the organizations, detection methods, quantify accuracy and provide guidelines on how some of the shortcomings encountered in this effort might be addressed in the future. To support this validation, a manually mapped polygon-based landslide inventory covering the entire affected area was created and is also released through this effort.
                Creative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
                • Article
                • Peer Reviewed
                LBL Publications (2024)
                Abstract: Salt marshes exist at the terrestrial-marine interface, providing important ecosystem services such as nutrient cycling and carbon sequestration. Tidal inputs play a dominant role in salt marsh porewater mixing, and terrestrially derived freshwater inputs are increasingly recognized as important sources of water and solutes to intertidal wetlands. However, there remains a critical gap in understanding the role of freshwater inputs on salt marsh hydrology, and how this may impact marsh subsurface salinity and plant productivity. Here, we address this knowledge gap by examining the hydrologic behavior, porewater salinity, and pickleweed (Sarcocornia pacifica also known as Salicornia pacifica) plant productivity along a salt marsh transect in an estuary along the central coast of California. Through the installation of a suite of hydrometric sensors and routine porewater sampling and vegetation surveys, we sought to understand how seasonal changes in terrestrial freshwater inputs impact salt marsh ecohydrologic processes. We found that salt marsh porewater salinity, shallow subsurface saturation, and pickleweed productivity are closely coupled with elevated upland water level during the winter and spring, and more influenced by tidal inputs during the summer and fall. This seasonal response indicates a switch in salt marsh hydrologic connectivity with the terrestrial upland that impacts ecosystem functioning. Through elucidating the interannual impacts of drought on salt marsh hydrology, we found that the severity of drought and historical precipitation can impact contemporary hydrologic behavior and the duration and timing of the upland-marsh hydrologic connectivity. This implies that the sensitivity of salt marshes to climate change involves a complex interaction between sea level rise and freshwater inputs that vary at seasonal to interannual timescales.
                  Cover page: A Fresh Take: Seasonal Changes in Terrestrial Freshwater Inputs Impact Salt Marsh Hydrology and Vegetation DynamicsCreative Commons 'BY' version 4.0 license
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