For this weeks blog I have chosen to take a closer look at the San Andreas Fault line, which extends roughly 750 miles through California. The San Andreas runs through a number of major metropolitan areas, including both San Francisco and San Bernadino, and is visible here on the Earthquake Zone map as a thick black line extending from the Northwest to the Southeast.
The San Andreas is a transform fault which formed at the boundary of the Pacific and North American plates. I have several questions about the fault and its implications on human development:
1- How has the presence of a major fault changed the layout and structure of buildings and populations in the area?
2- Given the common occurrence of transform faults in oceanic plates, why did the San Andreas fault form in the North American continental plate?
3- Has the movement of the fault changed over time and how does this help us understand the geological history of the region?
No comments:
Post a Comment