I am a field geologist that uses a variety of tools, including paleoseismology, tectonic geomorphology, structural geology, and sedimentology to examine deformation of the earth's crust. I am currently a post-doctoral researcher at ISTerre at the Université Grenoble Alpes in France, and I will be starting a faculty position at the University of Alaska Anchorage in fall 2024.
email: [email protected] |
Recent Work
Our work " Discovery of an active forearc fault in an urban region: Holocene rupture on the XEOLXELEK–Elk Lake fault, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada" has just been published in Tectonics and is seeing some media attention! Check out the following news article in Victoria BC's daily newspaper, the Times Colonist, and a radio interview I gave on CBC Radio to learn more about study.
Recent field work studying active faults in northern Ecuador. The images above and left show subvertical strike-slip faults (at 4000 m elevation!) offsetting volcanic soils (black organic-rich material) and the underlying sediments (brown material). These faults are part of an active strike-slip fault system that we are currently investigating in northern Ecuador and southern Colombia. They may be accommodating distributed strain within a continental sliver, or block in the northern Andes that is moving separately with respect to continental South America. Understanding the locations and kinematics of these faults is key for understanding not only the regional tectonics, but the potential contributions these faults have to seismic hazard.
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Computing earthquake recurrence rates on the Puna-Pallatanga fault system in Ecuador. The graph at left shows earthquake recurrence rates as a function of magnitude modelled on the Pallatanga-Puna fault system (map at right) using Seismic Hazard and Earthquake Rate In Fault Systems (SHERIFS, Chartier et al., 2017). We are using inputs such as fault geometry and slip rates to simulate earthquake ruptures. We can compare these earthquake rates to the real seismic catalogue to try and determine which fault geometries and slip rates best represent the seismogenic fault zone, thereby selecting the best data to use in seismic hazard assessments. Our results suggest that slip rates observed over the entire width of the fault zone, which encompass off-fault deformation, produce earthquake rates that better compare with the earthquake catalogues. See our recent publication in Seismological Research Letters for more details.
Elk Lake fault paleoseismic trench: We recently excavated a paleoseismic trench across the Elk Lake fault in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. This fault, which we identified using lidar derived DEMs and geophysical studies, offsets and folds glacial sediments, indicating it likely has ruptured since the last glacial maximum. See our recently published extended abstract for preliminary results and discussion.
Modelling slip on the Leech River and Devils Mountain faults: The above image shows the results of modelling of slip on this system of forearc faults that cross-cut the northern Cascadia forearc. The BEM model we use (e.g., Delano et al., 2017) predicts slip that is solely a result interseismic elastic strain due to coupling on the Cascadia megathrust. We model reverse slip (above left) and left-lateral slip (above right) on the Leech River-Devils Mountain fault system, which is contrary to what is observed in both paleoseismic investigations (see below) and historical seismicity.
Leech River fault paleoseismology: Our paper, "Paleoseismic trenching reveals Late Quaternary kinematics of the Leech River fault: Implications for forearc strain accumulation in northern Cascadia", was recently published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America The photo above shows one wall of a paleoseismic trench that we excavated across the Leech River fault. This trench revealed that one oblique right-lateral surface rupturing earthquake has occurred at this location since the last glacial maximum, ~13,000 years ago.
San Juan fault kinematics: This photo shows normal faults cross-cutting Oligocene aged marine shelf sediments on the west coast of Vancouver Island, Canada. These sediment non-conformably overlie the San Juan fault and bracket the timing of its slip.
A publication detailing this work was recently accept to Tectonics (see preprint here). Also see our GSA Connects poster on the kinematics of the San Juan fault and the role it played in the tectonic history of northern Cascadia here. |
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