Quick Search:    advanced search

GSW Home   GeoRef Home   My GSW Alerts   Contact GSW   About GSW   Journals List   Help

This Article Figures Only Full Text Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in ISI Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via ISI Web of Science (14) Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Tsutsumi, H. Articles by Huftile, G. J. Search for Related Content GeoRef GeoRef Citation

Late Cenozoic tectonics of the northern Los Angeles fault system, California

¹ Department of Geophysics, Kyoto University, Kyoto 606-8502, Japan
² Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331, USA
³ School of Natural Resource Sciences, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland 4001, Australia

The northern Los Angeles fault system along the southern range front of the Santa Monica Mountains includes potentially seismogenic faults directly beneath the Los Angeles metropolitan area. For a better assessment of seismic hazards, we mapped late Cenozoic faults and folds in the northern Los Angeles basin using an extensive set of oil-well and surface geologic data. The northern Los Angeles fault system developed through early to late Miocene transrotational and transtensional regimes and a Pliocene and Quaternary transpressional regime. The Santa Monica, San Vicente, and Las Cienegas faults are early to late Miocene normal faults that were later reactivated as reverse faults, suggesting that the orientation of reverse faults is largely controlled by Miocene extensional tectonics rather than by the post-Miocene stress field. Tectonic inversion occurred at the beginning of Pliocene time with the reactivation of Miocene normal faults and initiation of reverse faults. Many Pliocene contractile structures became inactive by the middle Pleistocene, and younger deformation is taken up by new active structures, including the West Beverly Hills lineament and an active strand of the Santa Monica fault. The West Beverly Hills lineament is the northernmost segment of the Newport- Inglewood fault zone, which may have propagated northward to the Santa Monica Mountains in Quaternary time. The lineament acts as a segment boundary for the active left-lateral Santa Monica–Hollywood fault system and bounds the Hollywood basin to the west. Uplift of an oxygen- isotope substage 5e marine terrace north of the city of Santa Monica and an assumed dip of >45° for the Santa Monica Mountains thrust fault underlying and uplifting the Santa Monica Mountains suggest that an average dip-slip rate for the fault is <1.3 mm/yr. Crustal shortening across the northern Los Angeles fault system accounts for less than a third of the current rate of shortening between the San Gabriel Mountains and Palos Verdes Hills based on global positioning system observations.

Key Words: faulting • Los Angeles basin • seismic risk • slip rates • subsurface geology

This article has been cited by other articles:

				V. S. CRONIN, M. MILLARD, L. SEIDMAN, and B. BAYLISS The Seismo-Lineament Analysis Method (SLAM): A Reconnaissance Tool to Help Find Seismogenic Faults Environmental and Engineering Geoscience, August 1, 2008; 14(3): 199 - 219. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				J. D. Chaytor, C. Goldfinger, M. A. Meiner, G. J. Huftile, C. G. Romsos, and M. R. Legg Measuring vertical tectonic motion at the intersection of the Santa Cruz-Catalina Ridge and Northern Channel Islands platform, California Continental Borderland, using submerged paleoshorelines GSA Bulletin, July 1, 2008; 120(7-8): 1053 - 1071. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				A. J. Meigs, M. L. Cooke, and S. T. Marshall Using Vertical Rock Uplift Patterns to Constrain the Three-Dimensional Fault Configuration in the Los Angeles Basin Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, February 1, 2008; 98(1): 106 - 123. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				R. D. Catchings, G. Gandhok, M. R. Goldman, D. Okaya, M. J. Rymer, and G. W. Bawden Near-Surface Location, Geometry, and Velocities of the Santa Monica Fault Zone, Los Angeles, California Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, February 1, 2008; 98(1): 124 - 138. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				A. Plesch, J. H. Shaw, C. Benson, W. A. Bryant, S. Carena, M. Cooke, J. Dolan, G. Fuis, E. Gath, L. Grant, et al. Community Fault Model (CFM) for Southern California Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, December 1, 2007; 97(6): 1793 - 1802. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				W. A. Griffith and M. L. Cooke How Sensitive Are Fault-Slip Rates in the Los Angeles Basin to Tectonic Boundary Conditions? Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, August 1, 2005; 95(4): 1263 - 1275. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				R. S. Yeats Tectonics of the San Gabriel Basin and surroundings, southern California GSA Bulletin, September 1, 2004; 116(9-10): 1158 - 1182. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

				M. R. Legg, M. J. Kamerling, and R. D. Francis Termination of strike-slip faults at convergence zones within continental transform boundaries: examples from the California Continental Borderland Geological Society, London, Special Publications, January 1, 2004; 227(1): 65 - 82. [Abstract] [PDF]

				Geology of the Continental Margin beneath Santa Monica Bay, Southern California, from Seismic-Reflection Data Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, October 1, 2003; 93(5): 1955 - 1983.

				Puente Hills Blind-Thrust System, Los Angeles, California Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, December 1, 2002; 92(8): 2946 - 2960.