Digital topographic analysis, an important means in the research of active tectonics and tectonic geomorphology, has increasingly become one of the principal tools in the identification of active tectonic features and understanding of the development of the earth’s surface process. Indoor interpretation of surface fault trace plays a key role in the digital topographic analysis as it can provide the foundation for setting priorities and defining strategies in the subsequent field investigation. At present, the extraction of fault traces is often realized by assisting the traditional visual interpretation through the image enhancement method. The relevant subjective assessments lead to the amount of work and usually cause different results due to the differences in the interpretation experience of actual operators. At the same time, the field of quantitative research on geomorphic parameters is evolving very rapidly with the advances in the popularity of high-resolution digital topographic data. Therefore, intelligent and automatic extraction of surface fault traces has gradually become a promising research direction. The methods based on machine learning often rely heavily on the good programming foundation of the operator, which is a visible technical barrier. We present a semi-automated method using an ArcGIS toolbox with a set of tools to extract surface fault traces based on geomorphic constraints. The Hutubi and Dushanzi faults are two typical thrust faults located on the northern piedmont of the Tianshan Mountains and are chosen as examples. Excellent exposure of the surface fault traces in these two regions permits detailed mapping of fault traces and deriving shape factors of faults with high-resolution DEMs(digital elevation models). Additionally, they are two of the most-studied thrust faults in this area. Large-scale geological and geomorphological mappings of them and numerous achievements have been published. This creates possibilities for us to conduct comparison analysis on different major methods. Based on typical morphology characteristics of fault scarps, appropriate geomorphic parameters are selected. In practice, reverse fault scarps are distinctly defined into forward and backward ones according to whether their dip is the same as that of the neighboring geomorphic surfaces. Based on two sets of geomorphic constraints,two approaches are then illustrated, including slope calculation, gully extraction, data density analysis and process modeling. Through a detailed comparison of the final extraction results and previous visual interpretations of remote sensing data and field geomorphic investigations, the validity of the method proposed in this study is proven. This method provides a set of tools with user-friendly interfaces to realize step-by-step interpretation and emphasizes the importance of field-based geomorphic constraints at the same time. Moreover, many subtle fault traces which have not been recognized before are simultaneously revealed in the Dushanzi research area. The high-resolution DEMs guarantee the realization of picking out finer bits of fault information. Compared to traditional ways of working, the method has the advantage of automatically delineating reverse fault traces on the earth’s surface. This advantage can significantly reduce the efforts to manually digitize geomorphic features and improve efficiency. But many basic manual adjustment options for recognizing target characteristics also need to be set in extraction, because the distinguishing criterion of fault scarp and surrounding geomorphic landforms vary among different areas. In different specific circumstances, users can manually adjust relevant parameters for the extraction during the modeling process. Generally speaking, the more detailed constraints, the more confidence in the final delineation of fault traces. Subjective judgments are therefore particularly critical for conducting extraction under complex backgrounds. But improving the degree of automation of the whole process is still an important study direction. Future work is thus recommended to employ machine learning and explore appropriate evaluation methods to search for the optimal solution of intermediate parameters.

The top of the piedmont alluvial fan has the characteristic of fan-shaped terrain and gradually descending terrain in the downstream direction. Faulting of various natures will result in different geomorphic features of alluvial fan surface. The variation of slope aspect and height of the pure sinistral fault scarp at the top of the alluvial fan is analyzed firstly under the three conditions, namely, the fault plane is vertical, the fault plane inclines toward the upper stream of the river, and the fault plane inclines toward the downstream of the river. We have also analyzed the variation of slope aspect and height of the fault scarps at the top of the alluvial fan under different fault inclination conditions of inverse sinistral strike-slip fault and the sinistral strike-slip normal fault. The seven geomorphic types we analyzed above cover the geomorphic features caused by the activity of strike-slip faults at the top of alluvial fans, which can help us to analyze the formation of the landforms. Based on drone-measured terrain data, Google satellite images and field investigations, we found that the Dongbielieke Fault, which strikes northeast-southwest and is located in the eastern margin of the Tacheng Basin, Xinjiang, almost vertically passes through the Ahebeidou River which develops from southeast to northwest. The direction of central axis of the alluvial fan at Ahebedou River is northwest, with a north-facing slope. The fault activity has caused the development of an uphill-facing scarp that has a height of~5.2m and a slope aspect facing southeast on the top of the alluvial fan at the Ahebiedou River section of the Dongbielieke Fault. And on the piedmont alluvial fan 1km away on both sides of the river bed, the sinistral fault scarps have a northwest-facing slope aspect and a height of 1~5m. The river terraces are divided into five levels, the T2 on the left bank, T4 on the right bank and T5 terraces on the left and right banks of Ahebeidou River were affected by fault activity. Sinistral offsets and southeast-facing fault scarps were developed on the geomorphic surface. By using DispCalc_Bathy_v2, a script based on Matlab, we get the offsets of the river terraces from the high-resolution DEM data obtained by using UAV photogrammetry technology. The sinistral horizontal offsets of T2 on the left bank, T4 on the right bank and T5 terraces on the left and right banks of Ahebeidou River are(10.1±0.2)m, (10.6±0.7)m, (29.1±0.2)m and(20.0±0.7)m, respectively. The vertical displacements are(1.5±0.1)m, (3.6±0.3)m, (4.7±0.2)m and(5.2±0.1)m, respectively. The asymmetrical development of terrains on both sides of the river is affected by topography and fault activity. The terraces on the lower elevation right bank of the river are misplaced into the channel by sinistral strike-slip faulting to receive more erosion, so the offsets we measured on the left bank of the river are more reliable than that on the right bank. Through field surveys, we found two fault outcrops, indicating that the fault plane is inclined to the southeast. The young river terrace T2 was effected by faulting and a uphill-facing scarp was developed, which indicates that the latest faulting was of sinistral strike-slip with a normal component, but the fault scarp's aspect changed twice within a short area of two kilometers, which is not consistent with the geomorphological type caused by the strike-slip faulting on the top of the alluvial fan as we previously analyzed. According to the landform features and the strike-slip fault geomorphic model, a model for the geomorphic surface development of the Ahebiedou River section is established. In this model, we think the Dongbielieke Fault was an inverse sinistral strike-slip fault after the formation of an older phase geomorphic surface S1 in the area. The early fault activity formed a northwest-facing fault scarp at S1, the height of the scarp is about 10m. Then the alluvial fan(Fan1)began to develop, and the material brought by the flowing water deposited and buried the fault scarp at the exit of piedmont, resulting in the disappearance of the existing fault scarp in the piedmont. Then the characteristic of fault changed into left-lateral strike-slip with a normal component. The activity of normal fault with the fault plane dipping to SE would form a fault scarp facing SE on the geomorphic surface. With the gradually cutting of the river, river terraces began to form on both sides of the river, and the corresponding geomorphic features were formed under the influence of fault activities. A fault scarp with a slope facing southeast formed at both banks of the river's mountain outlet with a height of about 5.2m through several fault activities, and sinistral horizontal offsets of river terraces increased at the same time. And the height of the pre-existing northwest-facing scarp 1~2km away from both banks of the river's mountain outlet decreased to about 5m, which can be observed in the field. The eventual geomorphic surface is characterized by the features of downhill-facing scarp-no scarp-uphill-facing scarp-no scarp-downhill-facing scarp from southeast to northeast.