Related topics: earthquake

Researchers uncover secrets on how Alaska's Denali Fault formed

When the rigid plates that make up Earth's lithosphere brush against one another, they often form visible boundaries, known as faults, on the planet's surface. Strike-slip faults, such as the San Andreas Fault in California ...

How land deformation occurs when fault sections creep

Strike-slip faults can be fickle about their movement—they can move slow and steady or remain stationary until their built-up stress is let loose in one go. But how do these faults' movements change from a locked and sudden ...

New model may improve Bay Area seismic hazard maps

The Santa Cruz Mountains define the geography of the Bay Area south of San Francisco, protecting the peninsula from the Pacific Ocean's cold marine layer and forming the region's notorious microclimates. The range also represents ...

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San Andreas Fault

The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that runs a length of roughly 800 miles (1,300 km) through California in the United States. The fault's motion is right-lateral strike-slip (horizontal motion). It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate.

The fault was first identified in Northern California by UC Berkeley geology professor Andrew Lawson in 1895 and named by him after a small lake which lies in a linear valley formed by the fault just south of San Francisco, the Laguna de San Andreas. Following the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, it was Lawson who also discovered that the San Andreas Fault stretched well southward into Southern California.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA