Characterization of Fault Roughness at Various Scales: Implications of Three-Dimensional High Resolution Topography Measurements

Abstract

Accurate description of the topography of active faults surfaces represents an important geophysical issue because this topography is strongly related to the stress distribution along fault planes, and therefore to processes implicated in earthquake nucleation, propagation, and arrest. With the recent development of Light Detection And Ranging (LIDAR) apparatus, it is now possible to measure accurately the 3D topography of rough surfaces with a comparable resolution in all directions, both at field and laboratory scales. In the present study, we have investigated the scaling properties including possible anisotropy properties of several outcrops of two natural fault surfaces (Vuache strike-slip fault, France, and Magnola normal fault, Italy) in limestones.

References in corpus (1)

• High resolution 3D laser scanner measurements of a strike-slip fault quantify its morphological anisotropy at all scales

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• Morphological analysis of stylolites for paleostress estimation in limestones surrounding the Andra Underground Research Laboratory site
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• Curvature, a mechanical link between the geometrical complexities of a fault
• Stochastic Modeling and Upscaling of Hydrodynamic Transport in Geological Fractures