Surface rupture and shallow fault reactivation during the 2019 Mw 4.9 Le Teil earthquake, France
Communications Earth Environment
Aug 2020
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 shallow focal depth on a southeast-dipping reverse-fault. We show evidence of surface rupture and up to 15cm uplift of the hanging wall along a northeast-southwest trending discontinuity with a length of about 5km. Together, these lines of evidence suggest that the Oligocene La Rouvière fault was reactivated. Based on the absence of geomorphic evidence of cumulative compressional deformation along the f