Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 April 2016
The Amer fault is a 30 km long normal fault, which generated the damaging earthquakes of March and May 1427. Triangular facets, wine glass drainage basins, alluvial fans and scarps along the Amer fault mountain front provide evidence of its recent activity. Topographic profiling, electrical logging, tomographic and high-resolution seismic profiling along the northern segment of the Amer fault showed the following: i) no evidence of surface deformation in recent deposits; ii) fault scarps produced by the Amer fault located only on old alluvial fans, probably Pleistocene in age, and iii) Amer fault related deformation reaching upper Quaternary levels, but not the uppermost horizons. The high sedimentation rate (nearly one order of magnitude greater than the fault slip rate) due to the filling of the lake, which resulted from the damming of the Fluvià river by the Bosc de Tosca lava flow (17,000 yr BP), can account for the absence of surface deformation on Holocene sediments.