Paleoearthquakes of the past ~2500 years at the Dead Mouse site, west-central Denali fault at the Nenana River, Alaska

Abstract:

Understanding the record of earthquakes along the Denali Fault (DF) is important for resource and infrastructure development and presents the potential to test earthquake rupture models in a tectonic environment with a larger ratio of event recurrence to geochronological uncertainty than well studied plate boundary faults such as the San Andreas. However, the fault system is over 1200 km in length and has proven challenging to identify paleoseismic sites that preserve more than 2-3 Paleoearthquakes (PEQ). In 2012 and 2015 we developed the ‘Dead Mouse’ site, providing the first long PEQ record west of the 2002 rupture extent. This site is located on the west-central segment of the DF near the southernmost intersection of the George Parks Hwy and the Nenana River (63.45285, -148.80249). We hand-excavated three fault-perpendicular trenches, including a fault-parallel extension that we excavated and recorded in a progressive sequence. We used Structure from Motion software to build mm-scale 3D models of the exposures. These models allowed us to produce orthorectified photomosaics for hand logging at 1:5 scale. We document evidence for 4-5 surface rupturing earthquakes that have deformed the upper 2.5 m of stratigraphy. Age control from our preliminary 2012 investigation indicates these events occurred within the past ~2,500 years. Evidence for these events include offset units, filled fissures, upward fault terminations, angular unconformities and minor scarp-derived colluvial deposits. Multiple lines of evidence from the primary fault zones and fault splays are apparent for each event. We are testing these correlations by constructing a georeferenced 3D site model and running an additional 20 geochronology samples including woody macrofossils, detrital and in-situ charcoal, and samples for post-IR IRSL from positions that should closely constrain stratigraphic evidence for earthquakes. We expect this long PEQ history to provide a critical test for future modeling of recurrence and fault segmentation on the DF.