Michael Bunds

Utah Valley University | UVU · Department of Earth Science

We discovered several imbricate beachrock deposits (IBD), one of which was observed to have formed during the tsunami caused by the 1994 7.8 Mw earthquake in East Java, Indonesia. Similar IBD were also found along the southern coastlines of central Java, Bali, Lombok, Sumba, Kisar, Leti and Nailaka Islands. Most IBD are composed of thin, rectangula...

We discovered several Imbricate Beachrock Deposits (IBD), one of which was observed to have formed during the tsunami caused by the 1994 7.8 Mw earthquake in East Java. Similar IBD were also found along the southern coastlines of central Java, Bali, Lombok, Sumba, Kisar, Leti and Nailaka Islands. The largest imbricated beachrock slabs are around 3m...

Differential rock uplift and east-directed rotation in the footwall of the Wasatch normal fault is investigated using the modern positions and orientations of remnants of the paleosurface onto which Eocene-Oligocene volcanics were deposited. The modern orientation and elevation of the paleosurface is consistent with 10 - 20* of tilt inferred by pri...

The March 18, 2020 Mw5.7 Magna earthquake occurred 18 km west of the surface trace of the Salt Lake City (SLC) segment of the west-dipping Wasatch fault (WF) in the populous Salt Lake Valley on the eastern edge of the Basin and Range. The SLC segment is capable of producing a > M7 earthquake and it is late in its seismic cycle (WGUEP, 2016). Publis...

We excavated trenches at two paleoseismic sites bounding a trans-basin bedrock ridge (the Willow Creek Hills) along the northern Lost River fault zone to explore the uniqueness of the 1983 Mw 6.9 Borah Peak earthquake compared to its prehistoric predecessors. At the Sheep Creek site on the southernmost Warm Springs section, two earthquakes occurred...

We produced a very high resolution topography dataset along ~40 km of strike length of the Southern San Andreas Fault, from Painted Canyon to south of Bombay Beach. The dataset comprises a point cloud (8x109 points), digital surface model (DSM; 10 cm pixels) and orthomosaic (5 cm pixels). It was made using photographs collected with a small uncrewe...

The Great Salt Lake Fault (GSLF), North Oquirrh Fault (NOF), South Oquirrh Fault (SOF), and Topliff Hills Fault form a >200 km long, range-bounding, west dipping fault system in the eastern Basin and Range, near the populous Wasatch Front. The GSLF connects at its south end to the ~27 km long NOF, but it is submerged beneath the Great Salt Lake so...

High Resolution Topography of the Southern San Andreas Fault from Painted Canyon to Bombay Beach, California, USA Project overview, including data description, data collection methodology and processing, and links to obtain data from OpenTopography.org

The Basin and Range province in the western United States hosts numerous low-slip-rate normal faults with diffuse and subtle surface expressions. Legacy aerial photographs, widely available across the region, can be used to generate high-resolution digital elevation models of these previously uncharacterized fault systems. Here, we test the limits...

The March 18, 2020 Mw5.7 Magna earthquake occurred 18 km west of the surface trace of the Salt Lake City (SLC) segment of the west-dipping Wasatch fault (WF) in Salt Lake Valley, on the eastern edge of the Basin and Range extensional province, USA. Approximately 1.1 million people live within 20 km of the Salt Lake segment of the WF, which is capab...

Imaging tectonic creep along active faults is critical for measuring strain accumulation and ultimately understanding the physical processes that guide creep and the potential for seismicity. We image tectonic deformation along the central creeping section of the San Andreas Fault at the Dry Lake Valley paleoseismic site (36.468°N, 121.055°W) using...

Detection of Earthflow Creep from Topographic Differencing of Airborne LiDAR and sUAS – Derived High Resolution Topography, Shurtz Lake, Utah, USA Brigham Whitney, David Campbell, Dillon Forsythe, and Michael Bunds (michael.bunds@uvu.edu) Department of Earth Science, Utah Valley University, 800 W. University Pkwy, Orem, UT, USA 84058 The Shurtz La...

The competing contributions of tectonic and magmatic processes in accommodating continental extension are commonly obscured by a lack of on-fault paleoseismic information. This is especially true of the Sevier Desert, located at the eastern margin of the Basin and Range in central Utah (USA), where surface-rupturing faults are spatially associated...

Boulder deposits can be important records of tsunami activity; however, distinguishing whether they were formed by tsunami or storm wave activity can be difficult, particularly when they are located in or near the littoral zone. We used uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) and structure-from-motion photogrammetry to generate 4 sets of 1 cm digital elevati...

The Topliff Hills fault (THF) is a 25 km-long, west-dipping, normal fault in the eastern Basin and Range along the western slopes of the Topliff Hills and East Tintic Mountains. The THF, extending southward from the South Oquirrh Mountains fault (SOMF), may be seismically linked with the Oquirrh and Great Salt Lake faults to the north and the East...

The 1983 Mw 6.9 Borah Peak earthquake generated ~36 km of surface rupture along the Thousand Springs and Warm Springs sections of the Lost River fault zone (LRFZ, Idaho, USA). Although the rupture is a well-studied example of multisegment surface faulting, ambiguity remains regarding the degree to which a bedrock ridge and branch fault at the Willo...

The House Range fault data set comprises high-resolution topography and an orthomosaic of part of the House Range fault (HRF) and shorelines of Late Pleistocene Lake Bonneville that it cuts in the Sevier Desert, Eastern Basin and Range Province, Utah, USA. The data set covers ~4.5 km of the HRF scarp, in the central portion of the HRF. The site was...

This document accompanies a high-resolution topographic data set and orthomosaics of part of the Lost River fault zone (LFRZ), Idaho, USA. The topographic data set covers the northern ~16 km of the surface-rupture that occurred on the LRFZ in the Mw 6.9 1983 Borah Peak Earthquake (Figure 1). Point clouds and digital surface models (DSMs), were gene...

Historically, aseismic fault creep has been measured primarily at <40 m apertures with creep meters, at km’s distances with GPS methods, and with inSAR. In this project, we difference high resolution point clouds recently generated using structure from motion photogrammetry (SfM) against older LiDAR data, to ascertain the three dimensional deformat...

Indonesia has the fourth largest population on earth with over 260 million individuals and houses one of the most densely populated places worldwide on the island of Java. That said, much of Indonesia rests above active subduction zones. It is one of the most seismically active areas on the planet and has had several significant tsunamis over the r...

***** UPDATED LOCATION OF GUIDEBOOK: http://indonesia-tsunami-construction-guidebook.wikidot.com/ *****

We compared the accuracies of digital elevation models (DEMs) produced with structure-from-motion photogrammetry using different cameras, unmanned aerial system (UAS) platforms, and georeferencing techniques. The UASs and cameras were a Phantom 4-Pro quadcopter (stock DJI 20Mpixel camera), eBee Plus fixed-wing (20Mpixel SODA camera), and DJI Matric...

Deformed cultural features, creepmeters, and GPS reference-stations show active aseismic creep on the NW-striking central San Andreas Fault (SAF). However, the distribution of creep across the fault is poorly known because surface displacement measurements are spatially sparse. We image creep by differencing a 2017 point cloud generated from unmann...

We generated three digital elevation models (DEMs) over a one-year period to measure boulder motion from wind-driven waves to assess whether a deposit of ~650 poorly boulders on the coastline of south Java, Indonesia (-8.241, 110.985), may have been formed by non-tsunami waves. The DEMs were created from photographs taken with unmanned aerial syste...

The Topliff fault (TF), is a west-dipping normal fault extending ~30km along the southeastern side of Rush Valley, Utah. It probably is structurally connected to the Oquirrh-Great Salt Lake Fault, forming Utah’s second longest fault system. It poses significant earthquake risk to Utah County, however the late Quaternary earthquake chronology, slip...

Point clouds are a powerful data source in the geosciences, and the emergence of structure-from-motion photogrammetric techniques (SfM) have allowed us to generate them quickly and inexpensively. Consequently, applications of them as well as methods to generate, manipulate, and analyze them warrant inclusion in undergraduate curriculum. In a course...

Recent acquisitions of light detection and ranging (lidar) data along the Wasatch Front, and the proliferation of Structure from Motion (SfM) software present exceptional opportunities for detailed analysis of the Wasatch fault zone (WFZ). Between the Salt Lake City (SLCS) and Provo segments (PS), the WFZ takes a 7-km left bend along the Fort Canyo...

Landslides are important geomorphic processes in tectonically-active mountain ranges. Drainage-damming landslides (DDLs) can result in increased flood risk, alter stream discharge, form niche ecological environments such as landslide-dammed floodplains (LDFs), and completely alter the sediment budgets of affected streams. The Salt Lake Valley water...

New Data on Quaternary Surface Offset and Slip Rates of the Oquirrh Fault (Utah, USA) from DSMs Made with Structure-from-Motion Methods Michael Bunds1 (michael.bunds@uvu.edu), Jeremy Andreini1, Michael Arnold1, Kenneth Larsen1, Andrew Fletcher2, and Nathan Toké1 1Department of Earth Science, Utah Valley University, 800 W. University Pkwy, Orem, U...

Inexpensive remotely-piloted aerial vehicles and Structure from Motion (SfM) software enable rapid creation of high resolution digital surface models (DSMs) and orthophotos that are a powerful data set in many types of studies, including evaluation of geologic hazards. We used photographs taken from a DJI Phantom II quadcopter outfitted with a GoPr...

In 1983, about 36 km of the 130-km-long Lost River fault zone (LRFZ) in the Basin and Range Province ruptured in the M 6.9 Borah Peak earthquake. The greatest normal-faulting displacement (~2 m) occurred along the 24-km-long Thousand Springs section of the fault, but surface rupture extended north, across a prominent bedrock ridge that forms a stru...

Left-stepping en echelon fractures formed at the Dry Lake Valley paleoseismic site (DLV, 36.470N, 121.057W) on the central creeping segment of the San Andreas Fault (SAF) during the 2012-14 drought. The fractures were investigated using high resolution DEMs and orthophotos made by applying Structure from Motion processing to photos taken using a UA...

Ultra-high resolution mapping and paleoseismic investigation of the Dry Lake Valley site (DLV: 36.4679, -121.0556) in San Benito County, California presents evidence of a > 5000 year record of San Andreas Fault (SAF) deformation due to creep. From January 2013 to October 2014 this area was historically dry, producing no hydrologic events capable of...

The North American monsoon and flash floods are important factors in annual sediment budgets and geomorphic change along streams in the southwestern United States. In 2013 we initiated a project to investigate paleo, historic and present day patterns of fluvial geomorphic change within the lowlands of the Water Pocket Fold along a ~500 m reach of P...

We used low-altitude photographs of six study sites, taken from two aerial platforms and processed with Structure from Motion (SfM) software, to construct digital elevation models (DEMs) and assess their accuracy. Photographs were taken at five sites with a GoPro (12 MPixel, Hero3 Black) or Sony A5100 (24 MPixel, 16 mm lens) camera mounted to a Pha...

Mass wasting plays a major role in the evolution of watersheds in tectonically active mountain ranges. Large stream-damming landslides can create flood risks, alter the water supply to communities downstream, form landslide-dammed floodplains (LDFs), as well as alter canyon geomorphology, sediment transport, and local ecology. Large landslide trigg...

Between the Provo and Salt Lake City segments the Wasatch fault is expressed as an 8-12 Km long network of discontinuous surface breaks. At both ends of the segment boundary the trend of the fault rotates by ~90 degrees, over a distance of ~2 km, from roughly N-S to E-W. The most prominent surface breaks (Holocene surface break apparent) range from...

Available with full text.

Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) and other debris flow and flood events are major hazards in and downstream from glaciated areas in the Nepal Himalaya and many other mountainous areas. Furthermore, global warming likely will increase GLOF frequency. However, in the Nepal Himalaya little is known of the frequency of GLOFs prior to 50 years ago m...

The Castle Mountain fault is a 200-km-long, right-lateral fault that forms the northern boundary of the Cook Inlet basin and Matanuska Valley, Alaska. Fault gouge and fault rock at six localities contain the clay minerals illite, smectite, chlorite, and interstratified illite/smectite. At one locality, gouge contains deformed illite/smectite with v...

Analyses of structures along the Castle Mountain fault reveal the mechanical relations and relative timing of orogen-parallel strike-slip faulting to distributed wrenching and shortening and to plate motion in the southern Alaskan transpressive margin. The Castle Mountain fault is a >200-km-long, orogen-parallel, right-lateral seismogenic fault in...

Faulting controls fluid migration within transpressive fault-propagation folds in the Cook Inlet forearc basin of south-central Alaska. Na-Ca-Cl brine migrates out of Mesozoic rocks through reverse and oblique-slip faults into the cores of anticlines, where the fluid spreads laterally outward into lower Tertiary strata by flow through cross faults...

Thesis (M.S.)--University of California, Davis, 1994. Degree granted in Geology.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Dept. of Geology and Geophysics, University of Utah, 2001. Includes bibliographical references.