SCEC4 - Development of a new paleoseismic site at Elizabeth Lake, central Mojave section of the San Andreas fault

Statement of Problem: Despite the recent development of several high-quality paleoseismic records for sites on the southern San Andreas fault (Figure 1), the distance between some of these sites remains too great to reliably test models of earthquake behavior and understand possible persistent segmentation of earthquake ruptures. Because the earthquake record from Bidart Fan (Akçiz et al., 2010) and Frazier Mountain are very similar (Figure 2) but quite different from that of Pallett Creek (Scharer et al. in press), we propose to develop a new paleoseismic site approximately halfway between the Pallett Creek and Frazier Mountain sites, near Elizabeth Lake, CA. This location splits a 100 km gap that is large enough to hold its own M7 earthquakes, and should provide important constraints on the extent and timing of ruptures along the Mojave section of the southern San Andreas fault.