Submeter Resolution Surface Rupture Topography From Legacy Aerial Photographs - A Test Case From the 1992 Landers Earthquake
| dc.contributor.author | Lajoie, Lia J. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Nissen, Edwin | |
| dc.contributor.author | Johnson, Kendra L. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Lajoie, Kenneth R. | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2020-07-06T16:55:32Z | |
| dc.date.copyright | 2020 | en_US |
| dc.date.issued | 2020 | |
| dc.description.abstract | The 1992 Mw 7.3 Landers earthquake in the Mojave Desert (California) provided exceptional observations of surface faulting in a large, continental earthquake. The U. S. Geological Survey obtained nadir angle, overlapping aerial photographs at 1:6,000 scale for the entire urn:x-wiley:ess2:media:ess2482:ess2482-math-0002 85 km rupture length. Recent advances in Structure from Motion photogrammetry allow for archival photographic data sets such as these to be reprocessed, generating digital topography that can be reanalyzed quantitatively in a way that was not previously possible. In this proof‐of‐concept study, we generated a georectified, urn:x-wiley:ess2:media:ess2482:ess2482-math-0003 10 points/m urn:x-wiley:ess2:media:ess2482:ess2482-math-0004 topographic point cloud over nearly the entire Landers rupture length and a higher‐resolution urn:x-wiley:ess2:media:ess2482:ess2482-math-0005 40 points/m urn:x-wiley:ess2:media:ess2482:ess2482-math-0006 point cloud over a smaller ( urn:x-wiley:ess2:media:ess2482:ess2482-math-0007 5 km) rupture segment along the Emerson fault. We estimated the accuracy and explore the utility of our point cloud in two tests. First, we observe close geometric agreement (average closest point distance 2.1 cm and standard deviation 14.0 cm) between our point cloud and a 2008 terrestrial lidar survey of the Galway Lake Road site on the Emerson fault. Second, we made 173 vertical offset measurements within a small, structurally complex pull‐apart basin, also on the Emerson fault, and find visual and statistical similarity with 21 local field measurements. These two tests demonstrate that point clouds generated from legacy aerial surveys and georeferenced using free Google Earth and National Elevation Dataset imagery are geometrically accurate and can be used to densify geomorphic offset measurements even along well‐studied surface ruptures. Applied to other historical events, such measurements could provide new insights into earthquake rupture processes. | en_US |
| dc.description.embargo | 2020-07-30 | |
| dc.description.reviewstatus | Reviewed | en_US |
| dc.description.scholarlevel | Faculty | en_US |
| dc.description.sponsorship | This research was primarily supported by the Southern California Earthquake Center through Grant 15189. L. J. L. was also supported by a Pakiser Fellowship from Colorado School of Mines, and E. N. by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) through Discovery Grant 2017‐04029 and by a Canada Research Chair. Aerial photos are publicly available through the United States Geological Survey's Hazards Data Distribution System (HDDS) Explorer website (https://hddsexplorer.usgs.gov/). Our point cloud and other derived products are being made freely available through OpenTopography portal (https://opentopography.org). The Galway Lake Road terrestrial lidar data are also available from OpenTopography (under https://doi.org/10.5069/G91Z4298). Finally, we are very grateful to Ken Hudnut and Kate Scharer for their encouragement of this project and for help in tracking down and scanning the USGS aerial photograph data set, to Brandon Dugan, William Hoff, Yvette Kuiper, and Paul Sava for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript, and to an anonymous reviewer for thoroughly assessing the submitted version. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.citation | Lajoie, L. J., Nissen, E., Johnson, K. L., & Lajoie, K. R. (2020). Submeter Resolution Surface Rupture Topography From Legacy Aerial Photographs – A Test Case From the 1992 Landers Earthquake. Earth and Space Science, 7(3), 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EA000651. | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://doi.org/10.1029/2019EA000651 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1828/11900 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Earth and Space Science | en_US |
| dc.subject | high-resolution topography | |
| dc.subject | Structure from Motion | |
| dc.subject | earthquake surface rupture | |
| dc.subject.department | School of Earth and Ocean Sciences | |
| dc.title | Submeter Resolution Surface Rupture Topography From Legacy Aerial Photographs - A Test Case From the 1992 Landers Earthquake | en_US |
| dc.type | Article | en_US |