| NSF Org: |
EAR Division Of Earth Sciences |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | January 3, 2022 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 28, 2024 |
| Award Number: | 2145879 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Kimberly Blisniuk
kblisniu@nsf.gov (703)292-4522 EAR Division Of Earth Sciences GEO Directorate for Geosciences |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2022 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2027 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $582,316.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $505,317.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2023 = $151,400.00 FY 2024 = $134,713.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
1600 SW 4TH AVE PORTLAND OR US 97201-5508 (503)725-9900 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
1600 SW 4th Ave Portland OR US 97207-0751 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): |
Tectonics, XC-Crosscutting Activities Pro |
| Primary Program Source: |
01002324DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002425DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.050 |
ABSTRACT
Historically, few damaging earthquakes have occurred in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States, although the region overlies the seismically active Cascadia Subduction Zone. Earthquake resilience efforts here have largely focused on the offshore Cascadia Subduction Zone and its potential for magnitude-9 (M9) earthquakes. Damaging earthquakes on onshore faults, such as the Seattle fault, are also a poorly understood threat to the region. Few active faults have been identified onshore in Oregon, but new laser terrain imagery (lidar) has revealed widespread and previously unknown active faults distributed across the landscape. The purpose of this project is to establish paleo-earthquake timing and fault slip rate information for these newly discovered faults and to incorporate them into the team's regional model of fault bounded crustal blocks that accommodate deformation in the Pacific Northwest. This information can be used to update the USGS National Seismic Hazard Map and models of fault style and activity. This project will add to the broadening of participation of under-represented groups in an important STEM discipline, by providing support for female and underrepresented minority graduate and undergraduate students through graduate student research assistantships and paid undergraduate internships in the field of earthquake geology. It also provides for support an early career female principal investigator. The project will collaborate with the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland, OR, to develop an interactive demo exhibit on regional tectonics and earthquake geology. The primary goal of this museum partnership is to educate K-12 audiences, teachers, and parents about geology, plate tectonics, the field of earthquake science, and earthquake hazards in their community.
Oblique northeast-directed subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate and northward impingement of the Sierra Nevada block drive active clockwise rotation of the entire Pacific Northwest region relative to stable North America. Geo block models break the region into a system of fault-bounded rotating blocks, defined by regions of similar global positions system (GPS) station velocities. GPS-defined block boundaries are thought to be the focus of active faulting, but not all block boundaries coincide with a known fault system. The proposed project seeks to identify Quaternary active structures, characterize their slip rates, and to close the strain budget shortfall between geodetically determined block models and geologically mapped structures accommodating translation from long-term crustal rotation. This project is designed to improve understanding of crustal deformation through targeted tectonic-geomorphic and paleoseismic investigations in the central Pacific Northwest where the rates and timing of faulting during the past 30,000 years remain unconstrained. Data in this time range would bridge the observational gap between geodetic (short-term) and bedrock (long-term) observations of rotation and would resolve discrepancies between block models and models of distributed shear. Data collected in this study will evaluate the persistence of rigid to semi-rigid block boundaries determined from GPS velocity data. Results of the proposed study will improve our understanding of complex crustal accommodation of Pacific Northwest rotation in Holocene to late-Pleistocene time.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
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