Engineering Geology Field Trips: Orange County, Santa Monica Mountains and Mailbu - 35th Annual Meeting - Oct. 2-9, 1992

Orange County, California is situated 65 kilometers from the San Andreas fault, the active transform fault separating the Pacific and North American plates. The geologic diversity of Orange County bears witness to the activity along this plate margin during Quaternary time. Eustatic sea-level changes in response to Pleistocene glaciations have produced an overprint on the region of marine and non-marine terraces, drainage systems, and related deposits. This combination has produced a landscape as rich in variety as in geologic hazards.

The book is a brief physiographic setting, summary of the geology of Orange County, and a few comments on the practice of engineering geology and data resources available to engineering geologists in Orange County. The remainder of this paper describes the chief geologic considerations evaluated by the engineering geologist and discusses common design solutions.