Professor Toke's Geoscience Blog

Dr Bunds gave me some really good feedback on the draft of our Topliff fault manuscript this past week and I am about half way through those edits. Hope to finish those this weekend or the beginning of next week so I can send a better version to the rest of our coauthors. I heard back (last week) from Geosphere’s editorial and contracts office that our TLF manuscript is headed toward publication! I applied for and received a SAC award to cover the publication charges. Now just waiting on official word and proofs from the editorial office. The 2nd round reviews appear to be back from the lidar differencing paper about subsidence in Cedar and Parowan Valleys is S. Utah. I could see feedback in the submission system which was positive from two reviewers and less so from a third. Hopefully the editorial group sides with the majority!  I completed a peer review for JGR Earth Surface last week. I chatted with K. Smith about working on the Genola North fault manuscript soon!  The Par...

This week, I responded to four reviewers’ comments on our Southern Utah Land Subsidence paper. Comments were substantial, but not too onerous. The paper is being looked over by David Munsey and I should be able to resubmit it by the start of next week! Then, I’ll get back to finalizing the Topliff paper or continue working on the central SAF paper. I also had an organizing meeting as we worked to post an announcement for the Parkfield 2.0 SCEC workshop that will take place this June in the Bay Area. 

I completed a draft of the Topliff Hill fault zone paleoseismology paper and sent it off to my primary coauthor Dr Bunds for feedback today. It took about a month to write this paper. Along with other ongoing stuff. Feeling pretty good about it overall.  Yesterday I received feedback from four peer reviewers on the paper I wrote based upon work with David Munsey: LiDAR differencing to explore ground subsidence in southern Utah. The feedback was pretty critical. Seems like the reviewers really wanted it to be a methods paper, but it’s really a case study and explorative paper about what’s possible to see with LiDAR differencing with ground subsidence. I’ll see what I can do to appease them and if it doesn’t work out I’ll find a journal that’s more about geology than remote sensing methods. 

This week I used ScarpVS to analyze ~120 fault displacements across various geomorphic fan surfaces along the Topliff Hills Fault (and S Oquirrh Mtns FZ) which are just west of the Wasatch Front. Mike Bunds and I (along with 2019 Field Camp students) trenched this fault and have loose constrains on the ages of 4-6 earthquakes, so this work complements the trench study. I’ve already got 5 figures, 1 table and a few pages of writing done. Here is a summary of the displacement information along the fault:

This week I finalized and submitted a manuscript titled: "Imaging Subsidence Rates and Structures within Cedar and Parowan Valleys, Utah, USA from Lidar Differencing." with my coauthor David Munsey to the journal Remote Sensing (MDPI journal) AND I finished edits and resubmitted the Thousand Lake fault manuscript titled: "Variable Geologic Slip Rate and the Most Recent Earthquakes along the Thousand Lake Fault, Eastern Basin and Range, Utah, USA." by Nathan Toké, David Johnson, Christopher Bailey, David Marchetti, Tammy Rittenour, Robert Biek, Hanna Bartram, Sally Ward, Rachel Richards, and Clayton Forster. The revision is now under further consideration with Geosphere (GSA Journal).  It was a good week for writing as I was dealing with a fairly painful back strain which was so bad it was hard to walk and get up and down last weekend, but now is just keeping me from running and any quick pulling motions. Physical therapy for the issue is walking, so I walked to UVU ...

Whirlwind of a tour of New Zealand in bullet points: *Wonderful pre conference (ICG) field trip from Wellington to Kaikoura and then on to Christchurch: observing uplifted coastal platforms, fault scarps, landslides and discussing sediment cascades through the fluvial network from the thousands of mass wasting events associated with the 2016 Kaikoura EQ.  *great talks at the International Conference on Geomorphology. It was refreshing to experience a non-north American centric conference. So much learning about glacial, peri/para glacial, aeolian, pluvial and other geomorphic study sites around the world. Day 2 was obviously a highlight for me with all day in back to back tectonic geomorphology sessions and presenting my work extending Parker and Veronica’s Ksn of Utah study. I also found myself stuck in a number of planetary geomorphology sessions. fascinating!  *visited the Earthquake City museum in Christchurch and also toured the red zone neighborhoods by bicycle which wer...