Evaluating knickpoint recession along an active fault for paleoseismological analysis: The Huoshan Piedmont, Eastern China

Ground-rupturing earthquakes can generate tectonic knickpoints within upstream reaches of streams across active fault zones. These knickpoints are characteristic of upstream propagation of time-related process once generated by an earthquake, so analysis of knickpoint series in streams which cross fault zones can be used to infer paleoearthquake events. We studied the knickpoints along the Huoshan Piedmont Fault (HPF), which is an active normal fault in the Shanxi Faulted Basin zone, China, and demonstrate that analysis of knickpoints shows evidence for two paleoearthquakes in the HPF. First, we identified knickpoints in bedrock reaches upstream of the HPF using high-resolution DEMs derived from IRS-P5 stereo images and the stream-gradient method. After excluding non-faulting knickpoints, 47 knickpoints were identified in 23 bedrock reaches upstream from the HPF. Analysis of the most recent knickpoints caused by the 1303 CE Hongdong Earthquake allowed for local calibration of the retreat rates. Applying these retreat rates across the study area allows for the estimation of the age of other knickpoints, and constrains the age ranges of two knickpoint groups to be 2269-3336 a BP and 4504-5618 a BP. These ages constrain the ages of two paleoearthquake events at 2710 ± 102 and 4980 ± 646 a BP. The knickpoints along the HPF obey the parallel retreating model in which knickpoint morphology was roughly maintained during retreat, so the heights of knickpoints represent the coseismic vertical displacements generated by the earthquakes along the HPF. The vertical offsets for these three earthquake events are similar and are approximately 4 m, which indicates that the ruptures on the HPF obey a characteristic slip model with a similar slip distribution for several successive earthquakes. These results provide additional evidence of paleoearthquakes on the HPF and show that analysis of knickpoint recession along an active fault is a valuable tool for paleoseismology.