Stéphane Baize

• PhD
• Researcher at Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire (IRSN)

Probabilistic Fault Displacement Hazard Analysis (PFDHA) is pivotal in assessing the probability of surface fault displacement during seismic events, with critical implications for infrastructure systems like pipelines and lifelines. Recent earthquakes have underscored the importance of fault displacement as a cause of damage. This study aims to im...

Our study focuses on the southern segment of the Rhine River Fault, located in one of the most seismically active regions in intraplate Europe, at the southern end of the Upper Rhine Graben and forming part of the eastern Rhine Graben Boundary Fault. It stands out due to its impressive geomorphological expression in the landscape near the village o...

This study presents a numerical approach for probabilistic fault displacement hazard analysis (PFDHA), aimed at addressing an alternative solution to commonly used empirical methodologies. Our model utilizes probability distributions to compute the conditional probability of surface rupture (CPSR). Leveraging earthquake catalogs, we derived the hyp...

Earthquake hazard analyses rely on seismogenic source models. These are designed in various fashions, such as point sources or area sources, but the most effective is the three-dimensional representation of geological faults. We here refer to such models as fault sources. This study presents the European Fault-Source Model 2020 (EFSM20), which was...

Stable continental zones such as metropolitan France are characterized by slow deformation. As a result, fault slip rates are low and return periods long. However, these zones are not devoid of seismicity and can produce major earthquakes (e.g. Lambesc 1909 – Mw 6.0). The seismic hazard is therefore not negligible and needs to be better assessed. O...

New predictive models for fault displacement and surface rupture hazard analysis developed through the Fault Displacement Hazard Initiative (FDHI) research program require a high-quality empirical database to apply advanced statistical methods and improve hazard estimates. This article discusses the development and contents of the FDHI Project data...

During the Petrinja earthquake sequence in December 2020, numerous liquefied sand ejections came to the surface along the Kupa, Sava and Glina rivers in Quaternary alluvial sediments. In October 2022, we performed field investigation in the epicentral area, involving geotechnical and geophysical techniques, at different sites with sand ejecta or la...

During the Petrinja earthquake sequence in December 2020, numerous liquefied sand ejections came to the surface along the Kupa, Sava and Glina rivers in Quaternary alluvial sediments. In October 2022, we performed field investigation in the epicentral area, involving geotechnical and geophysical techniques, at different sites with sand ejecta or la...

Poster for AGU 2023 Meeting

The eastern Rhine Graben Boundary Fault (eastern RGBF) forms the eastern margin of the Upper Rhine Graben (URG), the most seismically active area in the plate interiors of Europe. Despite seismic activity posing a significant threat to the densely populated URG and critical facilities therein, only a few studies have documented the paleoearthquake...

The Carrascoy and Palomares faults are two major active faults of the Eastern Betic Shear Zone (SE Iberia), both controlling conspicuous mountain fronts. However, the area in between both faults, corresponding to the Mazarron Graben (MG), is a nearly flat plain bounded by a relief of smooth hills whose tectonic origin and evolution remains uncertai...

The NE‐dipping Anghiari normal fault, bounding to the west the Sansepolcro basin in the Upper Tiber Valley (northern Apennines), is thought to be a synthetic splay of the Altotiberina low‐angle normal fault (LANF), an active ENE‐dipping extensional detachment whose seismogenic behavior is debated. In order to assess the Anghiari fault capability to...

Earthquake hazard analyses rely on the availability of seismogenic source models. These are designed in different fashions, such as point sources or area sources, but the most effective is the three-dimensional representation of geological faults. We here refer to such models as fault sources. This study presents the European Fault-Source Model 202...

The Carrascoy and Palomares faults are two major active faults of the Eastern Betic Shear Zone (SE Iberia), both controlling conspicuous mountain fronts. However, the area in between both faults, corresponding to the Mazarron Graben (MG), is a nearly flat plain bounded by a relief of smooth hills whose tectonic origin and evolution remains uncertai...

The eastern Rhine Graben Boundary Fault (eastern RGBF) forms the eastern margin of the Upper Rhine Graben (URG), the most seismically active area in the plate interiors of Europe. Despite seismic activity posing a significant threat to the densely populated URG and critical facilities therein, only a few studies have documented the paleoearthquake...

The occurrence of extensive liquefaction during the 2020 Petrinja earthquake in the epi-central area raises many questions, notably the geometries of sedimentary bodies in depth. In the fluvial plains of the Kupa, Glina and Sava rivers, many lines of sand ejecta and cracks at the surface are subparallel to the riverbanks in convex meanders and woul...

During the Petrinja earthquake sequence in December 2020, numerous liquefied sand ejections came to the surface along the Kupa, Sava and Glina rivers in Quaternary alluvial sediments. In October 2022, we performed field investigation in the epicentral area, involving geotechnical and geophysical techniques, at different sites with sand ejecta or la...

Fault slip rate is one of the most crucial parameters to characterize earthquake occurrence in fault‐based seismic hazard assessments (SHA). Accordingly, paleoseismic studies have increasingly focused on constraining this parameter in active faults worldwide. We present a comprehensive paleoseismic study in the Alhama de Murcia Fault (AMF), one of...

Plain Language Summary The magnitude 6.4 Petrinja earthquake that stroke Croatia on 29 December 2020, is one of the largest earthquakes registered for decades in continental Europe. Large damage and surface ruptures were observed, suggesting that the earthquake occurred at a very shallow depth. The slip pattern for such moderate magnitude earthquak...

Surface rupturing data from the historical earthquakes is used for obtaining empirical regression parameters for fault displacement hazard assessment. This paper represents an additional compilation and analysis effort, extending the first version of the SUrface Ruptures due to Earthquake (SURE) database. This new release contains slip measurements...

The Alhama de Murcia Fault is one of the main seismogenic faults in the Eastern Betic Shear Zone. In the segment between Lorca and Totana, the fault is composed of five main branches, four of them having been studied previously with paleoseismology. This work focusses on the unexplored branch (N2a-AMF) to analyse its seismic potential and to refine...

The north-striking sinistral reverse Papatea Fault ruptured with a very large (up to 12 m) oblique slip as part of the 2016 MW 7.8 Kaikōura earthquake in the northeastern South Island. Paleoseismic studies were undertaken at three sites along the Papatea Fault, named Murray’s roadcut, Jacqui’s Gully (both on the main strand), and Wharekiri trench (...

The Alhama de Murcia Fault (AMF) is one of the main seismogenic faults in the Eastern Betic Shear Zone (EBSZ). In the segment between Lorca and Totana, the fault is composed of five main branches. A previous study carried out the first paleoseismic transect in four of these branches, leaving pending the analysis in one of them (N2a-AMF) due to the...

The Cotentin peninsula and the Normano-Breton Gulf are characterized by a low to moderate intraplate seismicity. To address the issue of the earthquake sources, we analyse a combination of offshore geomorphology, seismicity relocation and focal mechanism data. The detailed structural analysis from high-resolution bathymetry in the north of La Hague...

The Cotentin peninsula and the Normano-Breton Gulf is a polyphased basement marked by deep NE-SW Cadomian ductile shear zones and NW-SE Variscan fault system (fig.1). The region is characterized by diffuse and moderate seismicity (fig.4). However, significant seismic activity occurs locally offshore Jersey Islands (clustering), where the epicentral...

On 29 December 2020, a shallow earthquake of magnitude Mw 6.4 struck northern Croatia, near the town of Petrinja, more than 24 hours after a strong foreshock (Ml 5). We formed a reconnaissance team of European geologists and engineers, from Croatia, Slovenia, France, Italy and Greece, rapidly deployed in the field to map the evidence of coseismic e...

The 2019-11-1, Mw4.9 Le Teil earthquake occurred within the NE termination of the Cévennes faults system (CFS) in southern France, along the La Rouvière fault (LRF), an Oligocene normal fault which was not known to be potentially active. This shallow moderate magnitude reversefaulting event produced a 5 km-long surface rupture and strong ground sha...

When an earthquake in southern France caused the ground to rupture—a phenomenon not known during the last 25 years in the region—the earthquake science community worked together to determine the implications for hazard assessment. Now we must maintain that spirit of co-operation for the future. When an earthquake in southern France caused the groun...

Mainland France is part of a plate interior with a strong structural heritage, undergoing a low rate of deformation, where destructive earthquakes can nevertheless occur. In this paper, we emphasize that the knowledge of active faults is still largely fragmentary, and that significant efforts are needed to generate robust data, in particular on the...

Plain Language Summary The surface of the Earth is constantly moving from about a few millimeters to a few centimeters per year in response to geological processes such as tectonic plate motions and gravitational re‐equilibrium. In the Western European Alps, where the mountain‐building phase of the belt is over, the processes at the origin of surfa...

Mainland France is part of a plate interior with a strong structural heritage, undergoing a low rate of deformation, where destructive earthquakes can nevertheless occur. In this paper, we emphasize that the knowledge of active faults is still largely fragmentary, and that significant efforts are needed to generate robust data, in particular on the...

The analysis of the seismicity catalog (1996 to 2019) covering the region from the Jura mountains to Corsica provides a first-order image of the distribution of earthquakes, highlighting large structures such as the Briançonnais and Piedmontais seismic arcs, the eastward deepening of the focal depths through the Western Alps, several large active f...

This report presents the development and results of a new surface rupture mapping and fault displacement database. The new database provides an updated and standardized collection of fault displacement measurements and surface rupture maps. The work was completed as part of the Fault Displacement Hazard Initiative (FDHI) Project, which is a multi-y...

Due to the low to moderate seismicity of the European Western Alps, few focal mechanisms are available in this region to this day, and the corresponding current seismic stress and strain fields remain partly elusive. The development of dense seismic networks in past decades now provides a substantial number of seismic records in the 0–5 magnitude r...

The Billecocha plateau (4000 m a.s.l.) lies in the high elevation Ecuadorian Andes volcanic arc. It overhangs by 2000 m above the interandean valley. Both the plateau and surrounding volcanoes are heavily affected by active faulting characterized by straight, sharp and discontinuous scarps within a 6 km wide and 24 km long corridor. Contrasting int...

Geodetic benchmark displacement measurements following the 2020 Petrinjaearthquakein Croatia.

After the earthquake of 29/12/2020 in Petrinja (ML6.2, ImaxVIII-IX EMS), an attempt was made to characterize the active structure associated with the earthquake. As a first step towards this goal, we performed a geomorphological analysis in order to contribute to the identification and characterization of the surface expression of the active Pokups...

The 29 December 2020, Mw 6.4 Petrinja earthquake nucleated at a depth of~10 km in the Sisak-Moslavina County in northern Croatia,~6 km WSW of the Petrinja town. Focal mechanisms, aftershocks distribution, and preliminary Sentinel-1 InSAR interferogram suggest that the NW-SE right-lateral strike-slip Pokupsko-Petrinja fault was the source of this ev...

Le 11 novembre 2019, un violent séisme de magnitude 5,4 sur l’échelle de Richter a secoué le sud de la France, fait trembler l’Ardèche et frémir Marseille comme Montpellier, faisant quatre blessés. L’épicentre, situé près de la ville du Teil, dans la vallée du Rhône, correspond à une zone densément peuplée avec de nombreuses installations industrie...

The 2016 Mw 6.1 Parina earthquake ruptured a shallow-crustal normal fault within the high Andes of south Peru. We use high-resolution DEMs and field mapping of the surface ruptures generated by the earthquake, in combination with co-seismic and post-seismic InSAR measurements, to investigate how different features of the geomorphology at Parina are...

Due to the low to moderate seismicity of the European Western Alps, few focal mechanisms are available to this day in this region, and the corresponding current seismic stress and strain fields remain partly elusive. The development of dense seismic networks in the past decades now provides a substantial amount of seismic records down to low magnit...

Probabilistic fault displacement hazard analysis provides a systematic approach to estimate the likelihood of occurrence and expected amount of surface displacement during an earthquake on-fault (principal fault rupturing) and off-fault (distributed rupturing). The methodology is based on four key parameters describing the probability of occurrence...

On November 11, 2019, a Mw 4.9 earthquake hit the region close to Montelimar (lower Rhône Valley, France), on the eastern margin of the Massif Central close to the external part of the Alps. Occuring in a moderate seismicity area, this earthquake is remarkable for its very shallow focal depth (between 1 and 3 km), its magnitude, and the moderate to...

On November 11, 2019, a Mw 4.9 earthquake hit the region close to Montelimar (lower Rhône Valley, France), on the eastern margin of the Massif Central close to the external part of the Alps. Occuring in a moderate seismicity area, this earthquake is remarkable for its very shallow focal depth (between 1 and 3 km), its magnitude, and the moderate to...

The Rhône River Valley in France, a densely populated area with many industrial facilities including several nuclear power plants, was shaken on November 11th 2019, by the Mw 4.9 Le Teil earthquake. Here, we report field, seismological and interferometric synthetic-aperture radar observations indicating that the earthquake occurred at a very shallo...

Due to the steady moderate seismicity observed along the Briançon seismic arc, in the southwestern French Alps, three temporary GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) surveys took place in 1996, 2006 and 2011, across a ∼50 × 60 km 2 wide area, to investigate the surface deformation field. The horizontal velocity field computed from these three s...

Based on new geological data and the analysis of a 4 m spatial resolution Digital Elevation Model (DEM), we provide a detailed and comprehensive description of section of the Chingual Cosanga Pallatanga Puna Fault System, a major active fault system in Ecuador. This work allows estimating new slip rates and large earthquakes parameters (displacemen...

Quito, the capital city of Ecuador hosting ∼2 million inhabitants, lies on the hanging wall of a ∼60 km long reverse fault offsetting the Inter-Andean Valley in the northern Andes. Such an active fault poses a significant risk, enhanced by the high density of population and overall poor building construction quality. Here, we constrain the present-...

Fault displacement hazard assessment is based on empirical relationships that are established using historic earthquake fault ruptures. These relationships evaluate the likelihood of coseismic surface slip considering on‐fault and off‐fault ruptures, for given earthquake magnitude and distance to fault. Moreover, they allow predicting the amount of...

The Holocene sedimentary record of the flood plain of the Saint-Ciers-Sur-Gironde marsh was examined on sediment cores from the right bank of the Gironde estuary with regard to the evolution of the marsh and its potential to preserve high-energy deposits. Sedimentological, geochemical, geophysical and micropaleontological methods were applied. Radi...

We integrate paleoseismic data sets along the Mt. Vettore‐Mt. Bove normal fault system rupturing at the surface in the 30 October 2016 Norcia earthquake. Through the analysis of new trenches from this work and a review of the preexisting data, we correlate events among trench sites along antithetic and synthetic fault splays. We recognize seven M 6...

This study focuses on the construction and evolution through time of volcanic edifices located in the southern part of the Ecuadorian arc, with the objective to contribute to a better understanding of the interactions between magmatism, slab geometry and the activity of tectonic faults. Our new groundmass K-Ar ages obtained for a dozen volcanoes fr...

The past thermokarst activities in valleys of northern France and Belgium covered the Upper Weichselian and the Upper Saalian periods. To develop in western Europe, thermokarst first requires an accumulation of ground ice close to the surface progressively stored along the glacial-time permafrost aggradation: it is regionally uncommon during the ea...

The past thermokarst activities in valleys of northern France and Belgiumcovered the UpperWeichselian and the Upper Saalian periods. To develop in western Europe, thermokarst first requires an accumulation of ground ice close to the surface progressively stored along the glacial-time permafrost aggradation: it is regionally uncommon during the earl...

The availability of GPS survey data spanning 22 years, along with several independent velocity solutions including up to 16 years of permanent GPS data, presents a unique opportunity to search for persistent (and thus reliable) deformation patterns in the Western Alps, which in turn allow a reinterpretation of the active tectonics of this region. W...

Movie of dynamic earthquake rupture simulation with coseismic off-fault damage.

The availability of GPS survey data spanning 22 years, along with several independent velocity solutions including up to 16 years of permanent GPS data, presents a unique opportunity to search for persistent (and thus reliable) deformation patterns in the Western Alps, which in turn allow a reinterpretation of the active tectonics of this region. W...

The Asian plate interiors are known to have host strong earthquakes with magnitudes up to M ≈ 8 in recent history, especially around the border area between Mongolia, Kazakhstan, China and Russia (e.g., M7.3 Chuya earthquake, 2003). Their recurrence times seem to be long, because of the relative low slip rates (<1 mm/y) of the faults which caused t...

The Eastern Betics Shear Zone (EBSZ), in SE Iberia, is a slow deformation zone with low seismicity. Given the lack of moderate-large earthquakes in historical times along the Carboneras fault (CF), palaeoseismological analyses are needed to better assess the seismic hazard of the area. The last paleoseismic and geological onshore-offshore studies o...

Fracture damage patterns around faults, induced by dynamic earthquake rupture, is an invaluable record to clarify the rupture process on complex fault networks. The 2016 Mw 7.8 Kaikoura earthquake in New Zealand has been reported as one of the most complex earthquakes ever documented that ruptured at-least 15 faults. Satellite optical image correla...

Large continental earthquakes activate multiple faults in a complex fault system, dynamically inducing co-seismic damage around them. The 2016 Mw 7.8 Kaikoura earthquake in the northern South Island of New Zealand has been reported as one of the most complex continental earthquakes ever documented1, which resulted in a distinctive on and off-fault...

We present a comprehensive probabilistic seismic hazard study for Ecuador, a country exposed to a high seismic hazard from megathrust subduction earthquakes and moderate-to-large shallow crustal earthquakes. Building on knowledge gained during the last decade about historical and contemporary seismicity, active tectonics, geodynamics, and geodesy,...

We provide a database of the coseismic geological surface effects following the Mw 6.5 Norcia earthquake that hit central Italy on 30 October 2016. This was one of the strongest seismic events to occur in Europe in the past thirty years, causing complex surface ruptures over an area of >400 km2. The database originated from the collaboration of sev...

We present a 1:25,000 scale map of the coseismic surface ruptures following the 30 October 2016 M w 6.5 Norcia normal-faulting earthquake, central Italy. Detailed rupture mapping is based on almost 11,000 oblique photographs taken from helicopter flights, that has been verified and integrated with field data (>7000 measurements). Thanks to the comm...

Fault Displacement Hazard Assessment is based on empirical relationships from historic fault ruptures. These relationships establish the likelihood of co-seismic fault displacements values, for on-fault (i.e. along the primary earthquake fault) and off-fault (i.e. distributed surface rupture off the primary rupture) displacements, for a given earth...

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The Venta de Bravo normal fault is one of the longest structures in the intra-arc fault system of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt. It defines, together with the Pastores Fault, the 80 km long southern margin of the Acambay Graben. We focus on the westernmost segment of the Venta de Bravo fault and provide new paleoseismological information, evaluat...

Supported by: CGL2015-66263-R MINECO/FEDER “PREVENT” project.

The Upper Rhine Graben is a large N-S structure inherited from the Oligo-Miocene extensional phase in Europe. It is now a moderately active area with steady seismicity (up to ca. M5) and strong historical events (M6.5+). To date, few studies have documented the paleoearthquake history of the structures that bound the graben, while the area encompas...

Fault Displacement Hazard Assessment is based on empirical relationships from historic fault ruptures. These relationships establish the likelihood of co-seismic fault displacements values, for on-fault (i.e. along the primary earthquake fault) and off-fault (i.e. distributed surface rupture off the primary rupture) displacements, for a given earth...

The Meinong earthquake generated up to ~10 cm surface displacement located 10-35 km W of the epicenter and monitored by InSAR and GPS. In addition to co-seismic deformation related to the deep earthquake source, InSAR revealed three sharp surface displacement gradients. One of them is extensional and is inconsistent with the westward interseismic s...

We perform a fault-based probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA) exercise in the Upper Rhine Graben to quantify the relative influence of fault parameters on the hazard at the Fessenheim nuclear power plant site. Specifically, we show that the potentially active faults described in the companion paper (Jomard et al., 2017, hereafter Part 1)...

The French Institute for Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), with the support of the Ministry of Environment, compiled a database (BDFA) to define and characterize known potentially active faults of metropolitan France. The general structure of BDFA is presented in this paper. BDFA reports to date 136 faults and represents a first step...

This study analyzes surface displacements generated by a low magnitude crustal earthquake in the Ecuadorian Andes by combining analysis of SAR Interferometry, geological field investigations and seismological data. In March 2010, a significant surface faulting event occurred in the Pisayambo area (Eastern cordillera), along the major dextral fault...