Characterization of Quaternary and suspected Quaternary faults, Amargosa area, Nevada and California

This report presents the results of geologic studies that help define the Quaternary history of selected faults in the region around Yucca Mountain, Nevada. These results are relevant to the seismic-design basis of a potential nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The relevancy is based, in part, on a need for additional geologic data that became apparent in ongoing studies by S. Pezzopane (written commun., 1995) that resulted in the identification of 51 relevant and potentially relevant (see appendix A for definitions) individual and compound faults and fault zones in the 100-km-radius region around the Yucca Mountain site. These structures were divided into local and regional categories by Pezzopane (1995); this report deals with selected regional structures. In this introduction, the authors outline the scope and strategy of the studies and the tectonic environment of the studied structures