Yesterday I saved myself, and reviewers, panel members, and program directors, a lot of time by rejecting my own proposal before I even started writing it. I'd spent the previous week working on developing it, and spent a fair amount of time since September on the science. But my judgement is that it did not have a chance with National Science Foundation. It was due February 15 (so I still have time).

It was on the San Gregorio-Hosgri-Santa Lucia Bank fault system, offshore central California parts of the San Andreas fault system. I had published on the southern part of this area in the 1990s, including in the journal Geology as first author. The San Gregorio is supposed to have 180 km of right displacement in the region near Santa Cruz (city) and San Francisco. The question is where does this go to the south. Recent publications dump between 80 and 150 km of that displacement into Santa Maria basin, but this is simply wrong: it does not work for that much displacement. I thought that some of this stepped farther offshore and continued south far offshore and into Mexican waters. But, it looks like instead there is little displacement on the outer faults after about 16 or 18 million years ago. There could have been large displacements before then, but the sediment evidence for that has beene eroded away.

I'm really discouraged that I could not come up with a fundable proposal anywhere. I even was looking at the USGS data base of seismic reflection profiles (Google USGS NAMSS) as displayed on Google Earth, and I did not see anywhere new that I thought I was likely to ever work. Lots of data around Alaska though.

Better news is that my long-suffering Palos Verdes-Los Angeles manuscript got favorable reviews, so I will work on that.

Chris