MARTÍNEZ: And the study out in the journal Nature shows a connection between the size of the lake and its impacts on seismic activity. That's a region where more than 14 million people live. Scientists fear that the next big rupture generated here at the southern end could be strong enough to send multiple damaging shockwaves through the Los Angeles Basin. Now, the fault line, you might know, is famous for generating the damaging San Francisco earthquake back in 1906 and the Loma Prieta quake in 1989. MARTÍNEZ: And I'm guessing the San Andreas Fault has a lot to do with that.ĪNDERSON: Yeah, it's at the southern end of that 800-mile-long San Andreas Fault. There have been just under a thousand measurable earthquakes in the past month, most of them, of course, too small to feel. Now, the Earth's crust is pretty thin here, which allows for plenty of geothermal energy - that's underground heat that can be tapped - and lots of small earthquakes. The current lake was created by agricultural runoff after a berm broke back in 1905. So Erik, let's start by giving us a sense of where the Salton Sea is, how it came to be and why it's so important to seismologists.ĮRIK ANDERSON, BYLINE: Yeah, it's located just north of Mexico, about 130 miles east of San Diego. Joining us now for more on the study is reporter Erik Anderson with member station KPBS in San Diego. ![]() The Lake may be helping to keep stress off the southern portion of the San Andreas Fault, one of the world's largest faults. That's according to a study just out in the journal Nature. That's right, possibly delaying the big one. And it might be delaying the region's next giant earthquake. One scenario includes a magnitude 6.4 earthquake in Cupertino, in the heart of Silicon Valley, more than five months after the mainshock, a USGS report said.The Salton Sea in Southern California is not a sea. Significant damage could extend to San Diego and Imperial counties.Īnd a magnitude 7 earthquake rupturing 52 miles of the Hayward fault east of San Francisco could produce significant, damaging aftershocks farther away from the hardest shaken areas beneath Oakland, Berkeley, Hayward and Fremont. Geological Survey said in the 2008 report.Ī magnitude 7.71 aftershock could affect communities such as Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, Coachella, Thermal, Mecca, Imperial Valley, Brawley and El Centro. “This event would cause substantial further damage throughout the San Gabriel Valley, perhaps increasing the financial losses and deaths by 20% to 30%,” the U.S. Location, time of day, building codes and other factors make a big difference. The magnitude of an earthquake isn’t enough to determine how much death and destruction it will cause. Science & Medicine Why some huge earthquakes cause great destruction while others do little damage It’s therefore plausible that a magnitude 8.2 earthquake on the southern San Andreas fault, rupturing from near the Mexican border, through Los Angeles County and ending in Monterey County, could result in a subsequent earthquake in San Francisco, Jones said. “We aren’t going to see it everywhere 1,000 kilometers away, but we’re going to see it.” “So out to something like 1,000 kilometers, we have an increased chance of having earthquakes,” Jones said. So the fault length that ruptured in the Turkey quake - about 125 to 185 miles long - would produce a higher chance of follow-up earthquakes as far as 620 miles from the mainshock fault’s ruptured length, according to Jones. In addition, subsequent earthquakes a distance of roughly four times that of the ruptured fault length of the mainshock are considered “triggered” quakes. ![]() That means the Santa Monica Bay quake, roughly 250 miles from the southernmost end of the ruptured San Andreas fault, would be considered an aftershock of the 1906 San Francisco quake. ![]() Such a quake would be ‘so powerful that it causes widespread damage and consequently affects lives and livelihoods of all southern Californians,’ a report says. ![]() California An earthquake the size of Turkey’s would bring devastation, death to Southern California
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |