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How Has the Landscape Affected by the Ridgecrest CA Earthquake Sequence Changed Since 2019? A View From Repeat Lidar and Field Observations

The M6.4 and M7.1 2019 Ridgecrest Earthquake Sequence caused an extensive surface rupture through a variety of desert landscapes that include playa, alluvial, and bedrock surfaces. Since then, eolian, fluvial, and mass wasting processes have affected the landscape. The availability of airborne lidar collected in the weeks following the earthquake, and another survey completed in 2024, affords an opportunity to document the initial post-seismic landscape response to a major earthquake by generating a 0.5-meter-resolution map of elevation change. We completed remote mapping of landscape change from the repeat lidar and are in the process of incorporating field assessments of these changes. While many of the observed changes are expected—scarp erosion, fluvial modification of surface ruptures, and eolian erosion and deposition—we can now quantify those changes and observe the details of fault zone modification in a manner that may be useful to paleoseismologists that study past earthquakes using the subtle record of sedimentation and erosion preserved in fault zones. We also observed unanticipated landscape changes such as modification of extant ground fissures that have been present since at least the 1980s, and development of new ground fissures that have appeared since the 2019 lidar was collected. These fissures manifest as elongated narrow zones of material collapse and subsidence with no relative motion across them and are not aligned with earthquake surface ruptures or apparently connected to fluvial channel networks. The temporal lag in fissure development may indicate long-term response to the earthquake on adjacent fault zones that did not appear to change in the coseismic and immediate post-seismic period, or may be a result of non-tectonic processes. This integrated field and remote sensing study will document 5.5–6.5 years of landscape change following a significant surface rupturing earthquake and provide a snapshot in time for future observations of landscape change.

Session: The Landscape Record of Earthquakes and Faulting - I

Type: Oral

Room: Ballroom A

Date: 4/16/2026

Presentation Time: 09:00 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Stephen DeLong

Student Presenter: No

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