Abstract:
Planetary topography is the result of complex interactions between geological
processes, of which faulting is a prominent component. Surface-rupturing
earthquakes cut and move landforms which develop across active faults,
producing characteristic surface displacements across the fault. Geometric
models of faults and their associated surface displacements are commonly
applied to reconstruct these offsets to enable interpretation of the observed
topography. However, current 2D techniques are limited in their capability to
convey both the three-dimensional kinematics of faulting and the incremental
sequence of events required by a given reconstruction. Here we present a
real-time system for interactive retro-deformation of faulted topography to
enable reconstruction of fault displacement within a high-resolution (sub
1m/pixel) 3D terrain visualization. We employ geometry shaders on the GPU to
intersect the surface mesh with fault-segments interactively specified by the
user and transform the resulting surface blocks in realtime according to a
kinematic model of fault motion. Our method facilitates a human-in-the-loop
approach to reconstruction of fault displacements by providing instant visual
feedback while exploring the parameter space. Thus, scientists can evaluate
the validity of traditional point-to-point reconstructions by visually
examining a smooth interpolation of the displacement in 3D. We show the
efficacy of our approach by using it to reconstruct segments of the San
Andreas fault, California as well as a graben structure in the Noctis
Labyrinthus region on Mars.