What happens farther west? (In this picture the Bay Area is near the edge of that pattern, so while our faults creep they still are considered able to clobber us with magnitude-7 events.). Hayward fault creeps with a rate of approximately 1cm/year. Creep is steady fault movement, varying from continuous to episodic with creep events lasting minutes to days. Of all the East Bay cities, Oakland owns the longest stretch of the Hayward fault. Le Pourhiet did the computer modeling to show that the west side of the microplate arches upward by a hundred feet or so. The Figures that follow show indications of the Hayward fault creep on a road in the City of Hayward. The so-called creeping section runs from the village of Parkfield east of Paso Robles up to San Juan Bautista. Just days later, the September issue of the journal Geology came out with a paper that makes an intriguing connection between our creeping faults and slow activity on the other side of the Sierra Nevada microplate, where the Earth's outer shell is secretly splitting apart. The Hayward Fault Zone is a geologic fault zone capable of generating destructive earthquakes.This fault is about 74 mi (119 km) long, situated mainly along the western base of the hills on the east side of San Francisco Bay.It runs through densely populated areas, including Richmond, El Cerrito, Berkeley, Oakland, San Leandro, Castro Valley, Hayward, Union City, Fremont, and San Jose. It was approximately a magnitude 6.9. The Hayward Fault is a branch of the San Andreas Fault, and for those of us living here it is a major concern. There are many easy tours you can take to get a closer look at this subterranean beast, as well as maps to find out how close you live to the fault and what seismic hazards—such as landslides or liquefaction—exist near you. So is any of this a scientific fact? Our project is a literature review of scholarly papers and will attempt to cover select topics in the realm of earthquakes and landfills with a condensed discussion of the topic at hand. The Figures that follow show indications of the Hayward fault creep on a road in the City of Hayward. Its last major earthquake occurred on October 21st, 1868, destroying downtown Hayward, killing 5 people and, injuring 30. The fault broke for about 30 miles from around Milpitas to the Oakland-Berkeley border. The answer is … To those who still can’t get enough of this amazing geologic feature, this post’s for you. The east end (the Sierra) bends upward and the middle (the Tulare basin) bends down. Login to your account or register to create a new one to submit your comment. That side is pinned against the San Andreas fault so it can't simply break and spring upward like the eastern Sierra, which is being pulled away from Nevada. Every April (anniversary month of the SF '06 earthquake), tours would come and see all the wonderful signs of creep. The Hayward fault has a creep mechanism, where the surface shows signs of a steady movement while the tectonic plates are locked together deep below the surface of the earth. The last big earthquake along the Hayward Fault was in 1868. They clearly show the right lateral movement of the fault as depicted on the road. To solve for a time‐dependent mode Since then, nearly three million people have moved next to the Hayward fault with little regard for its earthquake potential. Near there the Calaveras fault splits off from the San Andreas, and in turn the Hayward fault splits off from the Calaveras—and both of those faults also creep. It is a right-lateral strike-slip fault, meaning that motion along it is mainly horizontal, so that objects on the opposite side of the fault from the … The Hayward fault is an extremely interesting feature of the East Bay and you can see its footprints all over the place once you know where and how to look. Cracks appear in masonry and paving along the length of the fault, and the walls of … In San Pablo Bay, there is a distinct along-strike surface creep rate gradient between 5.4 mm/year along the northern Hayward fault and 1.5 mm/year along the southern Rodgers Creek fault . The Hayward fault (HF), a major branch of California’s San Andreas fault system, produced an M ∼6:8 earthquake in 1868 (Lawson, 1908; Bakun, 1999). In my very second post, back in 2007, I suggested that we take over the name, and a couple years back I pointed out eight iconic places to see the Oakland fault in action. The result is that the southern Great Valley is at its widest and deepest there, in the Tulare geologic basin. (That's right: The heart of California—the Central Valley and the mountains that ring it—is a separate tectonic plate, bounded by fault zones all the way around. Streets crossing the fault in Hollister show significant offset and several houses sitting atop the fault are notably twisted (yet habitable). Alignment arrays ( named locations on the map) indicate that the creep process is centered on the surface fault and is manifest as discrete slip on surface cracks within a shear zone 5-50 m wide. The Hayward Fault runs along the foot of the East Bay hills, something that all residents of the Bay Area, and the East Bay in particular, should know. The three maps were compared with seismicity, including aseismic patches, surface creep, and fault dip along the fault, by using visualization software to explore three-dimensional relationships. If you think of the Earth's crust across central California as an air mattress floating in a pool, imagine a swimmer grabbing it in the middle from below and pulling down. For ten years I was lucky enough to have my office right on top of the fault, in the infamous "Section KK" at the stadium. There, most of the fault between the surface and its base at around 15 kilometers depth turns out weak and slippery, and only a narrow band of rock in the middle of that range has enough friction to gather a lot of strain energy. Although it is documented to undergo significant creep, with some creeping patches accommodating 50% or more of the long-term fault displacement, the fault also experiences moderate to large earthquakes (most recent M ~6.8 in 1868). Not yet; it's just another good hypothesis that fits a variety of data but needs refinement. Among other things, I talked about the fault's peculiar behavior called aseismic creep, in which the two sides of the fault move slowly past each other at just a few millimeters per year without the help of earthquakes. First, we want to explain why some faults creep and others do not – why it happens on the Hayward fault in Fremont, and not (for example) on the San Andreas fault in Palo Alto. Contributed by Dale Smith Photos by Phil Garbutt. An aseismic creep exists along the Calaveras fault in Hollister, California. The Sierra Nevada microplate rotates slightly and moves northwest at a few millimeters per year relative to the rest of the North America plate. The Hayward fault is considered to be one of the primary hazards in the San Francisco Bay region. Creep rates over … Thus, if large earthquakes can occur on faults, or sections of a fault, that are slowly creeping, these need to be better understood and taken seriously. NCGS Commemorates the 1906 Great Earthquake by Walking…the Hayward Fault! Under the assumption that the seismic hazard associated … The Hayward fault is a 90 kilometer long crack in the Earth's crust that travels through the San Francisco Bay area. Monitoring Fault Creep on the Hayward Fault using Structure from Motion Jerlyn L. Swiatlowski, & Gareth J. Funning Submitted August 14, 2018, SCEC Contribution #8509, 2018 SCEC Annual Meeting Poster #117 Fault creep is an ongoing process that can be a problem for urban areas that lie along the fault … The northernmost Hayward fault and Rodgers Creek fault (RCF) appear to rupture only half as frequently as the HS and are separated from the HS by a creep buffer and 5-km wide releasing bend respectively, both tending to limit through-going ruptures. Among other things, I talked about the fault's peculiar behavior called aseismic creep, in which the two sides of the fault move slowly past each other at just a few millimeters per year without the help of … The two fault-surface maps were superimposed to create a rock-rock juxtaposition map. The paleoseismic record allows multi-segment, Hayward fault-RCF ruptures, but does not require it. California really is different from its neighbors.). The Hayward fault (HF) in California exhibits large (M w 6.5–7.1) earthquakes with short recurrence times (161±65 yr), probably kept short by a 26%–78% aseismic release rate (including postseismic).Its interseismic release rate varies locally over time, as we infer from many decades of surface creep data. [1] Spatial and temporal variations of aseismic fault creep influence the size and timing of large earthquakes along partially coupled faults. Last week I gave a walking tour of the Hayward fault along the Oakland-Berkeley border. Thanks for signing up for our newsletter. The fault slipped 3 to 6 feet along the fault. The authors are Laetitia Le Pourhiet, a French geophysicist, and Jason Saleeby, a geologist at Caltech's Tectonics Observatory who has studied the southern Sierra Nevada for decades. On the east side of the Sierra, the mountains responded by springing upward to create the dramatic eastern face that includes Mount Whitney, highest peak in the 48 states. See them shown in blue in this figure from the Geology paper. In geology, aseismic creep or fault creep is measurable surface displacement along a fault in the absence of notable earthquakes. When the authors fed that result into a model of the San Andreas fault's physics, the model accounted for the size and nature of the creeping section. Summary. For the creeping section the model suggests a pattern of earthquakes no bigger than magnitude 6 or so, plus lots of creep. The "Big Drip", if I may call it that, is bending and twisting the rest of our microplate. Last week I gave a walking tour of the Hayward fault along the Oakland-Berkeley border. How California's Warping Microplate Makes Its Faults Creep. Although there are no observations of surface creep in San Pablo Bay, repeating earthquakes identified along the offshore Hayward fault trend ( 18 ) suggest that seismic Creep is occurring along it. The steady creep along the fault results in relative displacement of the two parts of the stadium. Generally creep occurs without … Its last major rupture occurred in 1868, during California's frontier days, and was the original "Great San Francisco Earthquake" until 1906.. Fault creep is aseismic fault slip that occurs in the uppermost part of the earth's crust during the time interval between large stress-releasing earthquakes on a fault or as "afterslip" in the days to years following an earthquake. Its paleoearthquake record suggests such events occur regularly and frequently, with a 161 65 1σ and 10 yr (1standard error of the mean) mean recurrence interval (Lienkaemper et al., 2010). The Hayward fault slips in large earthquakes and by aseismic creep observed along its surface trace. In the Figure you can see the almost 90 degrees change in the course of the stream. Geoengineer.org uses third party cookies to improve our website and your experience when using it. I pointed out places where creep has been gently distorting the streets. Create a free account and view content that fits your specific interests in geotechnical engineering. The Hayward, a major branch of the San Andreas fault system, exhibits creep along at least 68 km of its <100 km length (Fig.1). One of Saleeby's most interesting lines of research is exploring how the dense rocky root of the southern Sierra broke off (delaminated) and sank into the hotter, softer mantle beneath to form a "lithospheric drip" starting about 4 million years ago. In this paper, we refer to the whole creep response of the Hayward fault (i.e., the 6 years reduction in fault creep rate and the 1996 rapid fault creep) as a “creep … Second, and more importantly, knowing where and how fast the Hayward fault creeps allows us to make estimates of where it is not creeping. Figure 3 also shows nicely how the sidewalk and pavement are damaged only in the zone of the Hayward trace. Joyce Blueford and Mitch Craig lead NCGS members, family, and the general public on a field trip to examine evidence of the Hayward Fault in the East Bay. The seismic risk associated with creeping faults such as the Hayward fault (San Francisco Bay Area, CA) will depend on the rate of moment accumulation (slip deficit) on the fault plane, on the specific geometry of locked and free portions of the fault, and on the interactions between the fault zone and the surrounding lithosphere. Aseismic creep occurs in the uppermost 5 km of the Hayward fault, faster in the south (6-9 mm/yr) than in the north (5 mm/yr). Scientific consensus is when everyone accepts a good hypothesis and moves ahead because they've run out of good counterarguments. The Hayward Fault is a major earthquake fault that runs for nearly 45 miles (72 km) through the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay region. We definitely haven't reached that point for the San Andreas fault system. Creep along the Hayward fault resulted in the "migration" of the stream. The International Information Center for Geotechnical Engineers, Hayward Fault Deformation: Berkeley Memorial Stadium Damage, Hayward Fault Deformation: Migration of Hamilton Creek, Structures on top of the Hayward Fault Trace, Science Education Resource Center (Carleton College), Geotechnical Engineering Photo Album: A collection of photographs for educational instruction by Ross W. Boulanger and J. Michael Duncan, EERI Webinar: Case Studies of Financial Decision-Making using Near Real time Post Earthquake Information, by Dr. David J. Wald, Soil Liquefaction Analysis Software (NovoLIQ), Powerful M 7.0 earthquake struck Greece and Turkey: At least 60 casualties, M 7.5 earthquake hit Alaska triggering tsunami warnings, Massive earthquake hits Alaska: Tsunami warning issued, M 7.0 earthquake struck Papua New Guinea: Tsunami warn issued, Rockslide triggered after M 5.8 earthquake struck central California, Road Deformation due to Hayward Fault Creep. On its west side, the drip is still attached and pulling down on the crust. Earthquakes estimated at magnitude 5.9 occurred on the Hayward Fault in 1864 and 1870, and a magnitude 5.6 event struck in 1889. Fault creep is quite uncommon in general, but a big central section of the San Andreas fault complex is creeping today while on either side the fault is locked, building up energy for large earthquakes like the 1906 quake in Northern California and the 1857 Fort Tejon quake in Southern California. Professor Douglas Dreger, of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, University of California at Berkeley. Fault creep is the name for the slow, constant slippage that can occur on some active faults without there being an earthquake. transient fault creep accumulating an average of 20–25 mm of displacement on the fault followed by a gradual return to steady creep around year 2000. In spite of this, the fault has also experienced moderate to large earthquakes. The Memorial Stadium is located on top of the Hayward Fault trace. In the meantime, I can show you examples of Hayward fault creep in Hayward, in Fremont and in Pinole. On April 15, 2006, Drs. Get the best of KQED’s science coverage in your inbox weekly. The Hayward fault is documented to undergo significant creep, with some patches accommodating 50% or more of the long‐term fault displacement. Dislocation models of the surface deformation adjacent to the Hayward fault measured with the global positioning system and interferometric synthetic aperture radar favor creep at ∼7 millimeters per year to the bottom of the seismogenic zone along a ∼20-kilometer-long northern fault … The Hayward fault in California and the Chishang fault in Taiwan are examples of faults that rapidly creep at the surface but are also known to have produced magnitude 6.8 earthquakes. 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