Unprecedented movement has been detected on a California earthquake fault capable of 8.0 temblor. Here's one plausible way for how movement from the Ridgecrest quakes could cause quakes on the Garlock fault, which could in turn wake up the San Andreas.
A major California fault capable of producing a magnitude 8 earthquake has begun moving for the first time on record, a result of this year’s Ridgecrest earthquake sequence destabilizing nearby faults, Caltech scientists say in a new study released in the journal Science on Thursday.
“This is surprising, because we’ve never seen the Garlock fault do anything. Here, all of a sudden, it changed its behavior,” said the lead author of theAdvertisement Not only has the Garlock fault begun to creep in one section, but there’s also been a substantial swarm of small earthquakes in another section of the fault, and two additional clusters of earthquakes elsewhere — one south of Owens Lake and the other in the Panamint Valley just west of Death Valley.
A major quake on the Garlock fault could then, in turn, destabilize the San Andreas. A powerful earthquake on a stretch of the roughly 300-mile-long southern San Andreas fault could cause the worst shaking the, and send destructive tremors through Los Angeles and beyond. What’s unusual now, Ross said, is that the Garlock fault has been seismically quiet in the historical record until now. And while it’s unclear what the creeping and aftershocks might mean for the near future, the newly recorded movement highlights how much of a potential risk the Garlock fault is to California, should it rupture in a big way.
To some scientists, the physics of the magnitude 7.1 quake on July 5 immediately suggested that the Garlock fault would be more likely to rupture as a result. Here’s one possible explanation: The southwestern side of the fault that ruptured on July 5 lurched northwest.
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