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

Research

Summary of Recent Research Efforts:

1) Paleoseismic record of great earthquakes along the Sunda subduction megathrust northern Sumatra. Our studies will generate a record of paleo subduction zone earthquakes and tsunami along the southern part of the plate margin that ruptured in December 2004.

2) 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.

3) Magnitude 7.9, 2002 Denali earthquake, Alaska: Earthquake, recurrence, slip rates and slip-per-event along the Denali fault, Alaska

4) Potential for large earthquakes along reverse faults in the greater Los Angeles region - magnitude 6.5 or 7.5?

5) 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.

6) 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.

7) Variations of fault slip per event on the Carrizo Segment, San Andreas fault: Is the repetition of fault slip characteristic through time?

Teaching

Courses

I teach courses in:
GEOL 101, Physical Geology
GEOL 360, Structural Geology
GEOL 410, Snow Sciences: The Physics of avalanches
GEOL 415/515, Earthquake Geology and Neotectonics
GEOL501, Current Topics in Geology
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.

Published Work

Selected Papers 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:

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.

Streig, A. R, Rubin, C. M., Chen, W, Chen, Y. Lee, L., Thompson, S., Huang, S., Evidence for Prehistoric Coseismic Folding Along the Tsaotun Segment of the Chelungpu Fault Near Nan-Tou, Taiwan: Seismic Hazard Along Active Fold Scarps, Journal of Geophysical Research. 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.

Research Collaboration

These projects have been conducted through collaboration with:

Danny Natawidjaja and Dr. Eko Yulianto (Indonesian Institute of Sciences-LIPI), Harvey Kelsey (Humboldt State University ) and Ben Horton (University of Pennsylvania)
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) Kerry Sieh (Caltech)
Scott Lindvall (Wm. Lettis Associates) and Tom Rockwell (San Diego State University)