Late Holocene Deformation as Deduced from the Former Shoreline Height of Marine Terraces above the Seattle Fault Zone, Washington State

A flight of late Holocene marine terrace fringes the central area of Puget Sound, and records uplift over an extensive area above the Seattle fault zone. The E-W trending blind thrust fault zone is a source of major seismic hazards in the Seattle metropolitan area. Gravity and seismic reflection surveys indicate a south- dipping fault plane, but its exact location and timing of past activities were unknown. LiDAR topographic mapping of the Puget lowland revealed several fault scarps on the glacial landscape hidden under the dense forest. We observed the fault, offset on the Holocene marine terrace surface and measured the former shoreline height at 97 locations using LiDAR DEM to map terrace deformation patterns and their relation to the faults. Studied areas include 1) Alki Point, 2) the southern part of Bainbridge Island, and 3) the southeastern Kitsap Peninsula near Port Orchard and southwestern Bainbridge Island. The height of the former shorelines marked by the Holocene terrace changes from ca. 10.7 to 7.3m a. s. l in the west to 12.2 to 10.1m in the east of the Toe Jam Hill fault, and 10.6 to 7.8m in the west to 9.7 to 7.9m in the east of the Waterman Point fault. These changes indicate differential uplift of the terrace surfaces across the faults. There are two newly identified faults in this study. One is the Point Glover fault that is marked by a scarp in the LiDAR map and associated 2m offset of the terrace surface. The other is the South Beach Point fault inferred by the northward tilt of the terrace surface. Because these faults strike E-W, parallel to the main Seattle Fault on its south side, and have south-facing scarps and north-dipping fault planes, they are probably back-thrsuts to the main Seattle Fault. The width of the backthrust zone is at least 4km. The age of the terraces approximately coincides with the most recent faulting event on the surface fault (at least for Toe Jam Hill Fault, ca. 1000yr BP), thus the differential uplift probably occurred simultaneously with fault movement. Although the surface backthrust scarps are less than a few kilometers long and vertical offset is 2-3m, the total amount of uplift reaches about 12m. Subtracting the effect of the vertical displacement and the amount of northward tilting, the uplift of several meters still remains on the Seattle fault zone of over about 4km wide. This broad zone of uplift is not due to the slip on the subsidiary backthrusts, but probably due to the blind thrust of the main Seattle fault. We infer that at least some of the coastal deformation is caused by broad surface upwarping above the Seattle fault and that the upwarping occurred at ca. 1000yrs BP, associated with ruptures on at least three of the backthrusts. The uplift and faulting may represent the largest earthquake in the Puget Sound area during the late Holocene.