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Charles M. Rubin
Ph.D., California Institute of Technology
Professor of Geological Sciences
office:509. 963-2827; lab: 509.963-2822; fax:509.963-1109
charlier@geology.cwu.edu
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Research
Summary of Recent Research Efforts:
1) Variations of fault slip per event on the
Carrizo Segment, San Andreas fault: Is the repetition of fault slip characteristic through time?
2) Magnitude 7.9, 2002 Denali earthquake, Alaska: Earthquake, recurrence, slip rates
and slip-per-event along the Denali fault, Alaska
3) Why do earthquakes ruptures stop? Temporal clustering of earthquakes eastern California
shear zone & variability of slip along strike-slip faults.
Recurrence of earthquakes along
the eastern California shear zone.
4) Potential for
large earthquakes along reverse faults in the greater Los Angeles region - magnitude
6.5 or 7.5?
5) Recurrence of large
magnitude earthquakes along reverse faults in Taiwan. A visit by earthquake geologists from the
United States in collaboration with geoscientists from Taiwan began to investigate the M7.6, 1999
Chi-Chi Earthquake.
6) Snow avalanches.
Avalanche occurrence and recurrence in time and space. Current avalanche projects include determining
precursory avalanche signals (e.g., creep events) and characterizing water percolation and liquid water
content of snow.
Teaching and Schedule
Courses
I teach courses in:
GEOL 101, Physical Geology
GEOL 107, Earthquakes
Volcanoes and Civilization
GEOL 360, Structural
Geology.
GEOL 410, Snow
Sciences: The Physics of avalanches
GEOL 415/515, Earthquake
Geology and Neotectonics
Seminars in active tectonics
Each September, Nick Zentner and I teach a two-week GEOL 210, Introductory Field Mapping Class
based out of the White Mountain Research Station in Owens Valley, California.
Tentative schedule
July 8 to July 18 - Field Work Taiwan
July 20 to August 2 - Ellensburg, Washington
August 3 to August 18 - Travel to Oregon
August 18 to August 30 - Washington
August 31 September 14 - Field Course, Owens Valley, California
Research Collaboration
These projects have been conducted through collaboration with:
Kerry Sieh (Caltech)
Scott Lindvall (Wm. Lettis Associates) and
Tom Rockwell (San Diego State University)
Yue-Gau Chen (National Taiwan University), Jian-Cheng Lee (Institute of Earth
Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan), and Kerry Sieh (Caltech)
John Stimberis (WSDOT-Avalanche Control Technician and
Alpental Ski Area)
Published Work
Selected Papers in Press:
Madden, C., Rubin, C., and Streig, A., Holocene and Latest Pleistocene activity on the Mesquite Lake
fault near Twentynine Palms, Eastern California Shear Zone; Implications for fault interaction,
Bulletin of the Seismological Society of
America, in press.
Jian-Cheng Lee, Yu-Chang Chan, Rubin, C., Mueller, K., Yue-Gau Chen, Wen-Shan Chen, Sieh K.,
and Hao-Tsu Chu, Quantitative Analysis of Movement along an Earthquake Thrust Scarp: a case
Study of a Vertical Exposure of the 1999 Surface Rupture of the Chelungpu Fault at Wufeng, Western
Taiwan,
Journal of Asian Earth Sciences, in press.
Selected Published Papers:
Liu, Jing, Klinger, K., Sieh, Kerry and Rubin, Charles, 2004, Six similar sequential ruptures of the San Andreas fault,
Carrizo Plain, California Geology, 32, 649-652.
Eberhart-Phillips, D., Haeussler, P., Freymueller, J., Frankel, A., Rubin, C., and 25
others, 2003, The 2002 Denali Fault Earthquake, Alaska: A Large Magnitude, Slip-Partitioned Event,
Science, 300, 1113-1118.
Thompson, S., Weldon, R., Rubin, C., Molnar, P., Abdrakhmatov, K., Berger, G., Late Quaternary
slip rates across the central Tien Shan, Kyrgyz Republic, Central Asia, 2002,
Journal of Geophysical Research, 107, ETG 71-7-31.
Rubin, C. M., K. Sieh, Yue-Gao Chen, Jian-Cheng Lee, Hao-Tsu Chu, Robert Yeats, Karl Mueller,
and Yu-Chang Chan, 2001, Surface rupture and behavior of thrust faults probed in Taiwan,
EOS, Transactions, American Geophysical Union,
82, 565-569.
McGill, S. M., and Rubin, C. M., 1999, Surfical slip distribution on the central Emerson
fault during the June 28, 1992 Landers earthquake, Journal of
Geophysical Research, 104, 4811-4833.
Rubin, C. M., Lindvall, S., and Rockwell, T.,1998, Large earthquakes in the Metropolitan Los Angeles region, Science, v. 281, p.
398-402.
