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Location map
(Courtesy Scientific American)
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The Surprise Valley field expedition to map the underground faults and fractures in Surprise Valley, California using SIERRA, is using a small aircraft capable of flying without a pilot on board, or unmanned aerial system (UAS). Faults and fractures generate distinct magnetic patterns,or anomalies. Geophysicists can look at a set of magnetic readings for a region and readily distinguish those representing these subsurface features from those that don’t.
The feature that the team is most curious about appears on their maps as a magnetic anomaly stretching over 30 kilometers through the valley, which they detected during earlier ground-based surveys of Surprise Valley. Unlike the corrugated Surprise Valley Fault, which meanders along the base of the Warner Mountain Range, this feature runs an almost perfectly straight course. It also coincides with a number of major hot springs, suggesting that it plays an important role in the system of channels and pores the circulate fluid through the hot springs, or the geothermal system, of the valley.
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The feature that the team is most curious about appears on their maps as a magnetic anomaly stretching over 30 kilometers through the valley, which they detected during earlier ground-based surveys of Surprise Valley. Unlike the corrugated Surprise Valley Fault, which meanders along the base of the Warner Mountain Range, this feature runs an almost perfectly straight course. It also coincides with a number of major hot springs, suggesting that it plays an important role in the system of channels and pores the circulate fluid through the hot springs, or the geothermal system, of the valley.
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