Holocene earthquake rupture of the XEOLXELEK–Elk Lake fault in the Greater Victoria area, British Columbia, Canada

Subduction forearcs are subject to seismic hazard from upper plate faults that are often invisible to instrumental monitoring networks. Identifying active faults in forearcs therefore requires integration of geomorphic, geologic, and paleoseismic data. We demonstrate the utility of these approaches in a highly populated region of Vancouver Island, Canada, by combining lidar remote sensing, historical imagery, field investigations, and shallow geophysical surveys to identify a previously unrecognized active fault, the XEOLXELEK - Elk Lake fault, in the northern Cascadia forearc, ~ 10 km north of the city of Victoria. Lidar-derived bare-earth digital terrain models and historical air photos show a ~ 2.5 m-high scarp along the surface of a Quaternary drumlinoid ridge. Paleoseismic trenching and electrical resistivity tomography surveys across the scarp reveal a single reverse-slip earthquake produced a fault-propagation fold above a blind southwest-dipping fault. Five geologically plausibl..., , , This README.txt file was updated on 21/09/2023 by N. Harrichhausen

GENERAL INFORMATION

1. Title of Dataset: Holocene earthquake rupture of the XEOLXELEKElk Lake fault in the Greater Victoria area, British Columbia, Canada. Dryad, Dataset.
2. Author Information
A. Principal Investigator Contact Information
Name: Nicolas Harrichhausen
Institution: ISTerre, Universit Grenoble Alpes
Address: Grenoble, France
Email: [e-mail]; [e-mail]
3. Date of data collection (06/2021 - 10/2021)
4. Geographic location of data collection: Saanich, British Columbia, Canada
5. Information about funding sources that supported the collection of the data: This research was supported by National Science Foundation Earth Sciences (NSF EAR) grants #1756943 and #2046278 to Dr. Morell, NSF EAR grant #1756834 to Dr. Regalla, funding from the USGS National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program to Dr. Bennett, an NSERC Discovery grant #2017-04029 and C...