the san andreas fault is located in which part of north america geology 321 course

The San Andreas fault forms a continuous narrow break in the Earth's crust that extends from northern California southward to Cajon Pass near San Bernardino. Southeastward from Cajon Pass several branching faults, including the San Jacinto and Banning faults, share the movement of the crustal plates.

Full Answer

Where is San Andreas Fault located?

Where is the San Andreas Fault located and what type of plate boundary is it?

Where is the San Andreas Fault located and how was it formed?

Where is the San Andreas Fault located and how long does it run?

What type of fault is San Andreas Fault?

Is the San Andreas Fault continental or oceanic?

What formed the San Andreas Fault?

Where is the San Andreas Fault in San Francisco?

How was the San Andreas Fault formed quizlet?

Where are the faults in California?

How far does the San Andreas Fault extend?

What are the coordinates of San Andreas Fault?

What happens if the San Andreas fault moves?

The San Andreas fault moves all the time, about 2.5 inches every year. If the rocks in the fault lock, build up stress and then suddenly release, i...

What cities does San Andreas fault run through?

The SAF runs through and by several major cities. Cities such as Desert Hot Springs, San Francisco, San Jose, and Los Angeles are all on or near t...

Where is the San Andreas fault located?

The San Andreas Fault is located in California, USA. It starts in the northern part of the state and moves southeast.

What is the San Andreas fault?

The San Andreas Fault is the sliding boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. It slices California in two from Cape Mendocino to the Mexican border. San Diego, Los Angeles and Big Sur are on the Pacific Plate. San Francisco, Sacramento and the Sierra Nevada are on the North American Plate.

Is the San Andreas fault more accessible than any other fault?

The San Andreas Fault is more accessible than any other fault in the world. With California’s large population and temperate climate, there are many roads that snake along the fault. They are uncrowded and peaceful, perfect for family outings.

Which plates are San Francisco on?

San Diego, Los Angeles and Big Sur are on the Pacific Plate. San Francisco, Sacramento and the Sierra Nevada are on the North American Plate. And despite San Francisco’s legendary 1906 earthquake, the San Andreas Fault does not go through the city.

Why is the San Bernardino fault so subtle?

In other places, it is more subtle because the fault hasn’t moved in many years and is covered with alluvium, or overgrown with brush. In San Bernardino and Los Angeles Counties, many of the roads along the fault cut through great mountains of gouge, the powdery, crumbled rock that has been pulverized by the moving plates.

Which fault is the most accessible?

The World's Most Famous Fault. The San Andreas Fault is more accessible than any other fault in the world. With California’s large population and temperate climate, there are many roads that snake along the fault. They are uncrowded and peaceful, perfect for family outings.

Where did the Salinian block of granite originate?

The Salinian block of granite in central and northern California originated in Southern California, and some even say northern Mexico. Pinnacles National Monument in Monterey County is only half of a volcanic complex, the other part being 200 miles southeast in Los Angeles County and known as the Neenach Volcanics.

Where was the San Andreas fault located?

The fault was first identified in Northern California by UC Berkeley geology professor Andrew Lawson in 1895 and named by him after the Laguna de San Andreas, a small lake which lies in a linear valley formed by the fault just south of San Francisco.

What plate is the San Andreas fault?

A continental transform fault through California between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. This article is about the continental fault in California. For other uses, see San Andreas (disambiguation). San Andreas Fault. The fault, right, and the Carrizo Plain, left.

Where is the Bolinas fault?

The fault returns onshore at Bolinas Lagoon just north of Stinson Beach in Marin County. It returns underwater through the linear trough of Tomales Bay which separates the Point Reyes Peninsula from the mainland, runs just east of Bodega Head through Bodega Bay and back underwater, returning onshore at Fort Ross.

What is the name of the mountain range that runs through the San Andreas fault?

These mountains are a result of movement along the San Andreas Fault and are commonly called the Transverse Range.

How long will the San Andreas fault slide past San Francisco?

Assuming the plate boundary does not change as hypothesized, projected motion indicates that the landmass west of the San Andreas Fault, including Los Angeles, will eventually slide past San Francisco, then continue northwestward toward the Aleutian Trench, over a period of perhaps twenty million years.

How long has the San Andreas fault been around?

The main southern section of the San Andreas Fault proper has only existed for about 5 million years.

Where was the San Andreas fault first identified?

Early years. The fault was first identified in Northern California by UC Berkeley geology professor Andrew Lawson in 1895 and named by him after the Laguna de San Andreas, a small lake which lies in a linear valley formed by the fault just south of San Francisco.

What is the geologic evolution of Southern California?

The geologic and landscape evolution of southern California is framed by plate tectonic interactions between the North America and Pacific plates, leading most recently to the growth of the San Andreas Fault system.

What fault is Mill Creek?

The fault history of the Mill Creek strand of the San Andreas fault (SAF) in the San Gorgonio Pass region, along with the reconstructed geomorphology surrounding this fault strand, reveals the important role of the left-lateral Pinto Mountain fault in the regional fault strand switching.

Where is the Salton block?

Crustal-scale tilting of the central Salton block, southern California. The southern San Andreas fault system (California, USA) provides an excellent natural laboratory for studying the controls on vertical crustal motions related to strike-slip deformation.

What is the geologic record of the 15' lead mountain?

The Lead Mountain 15’ quadrangle in the Mojave Desert contains a record of Jurassic, Cretaceous, Tertiary, and Quaternary magmatism.

Where is the Valley Mountain 15 quadrangle?

Year Published: 2013. Geologic map of the Valley Mountain 15’ quadrangle, San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, California. The Valley Mountain 15’ quadrangle straddles the Pinto Mountain Fault, which bounds the eastern Transverse Ranges in the south against the Mojave Desert province in the north. The Pinto Mountains, part of the eastern ...

Which direction does the Eastern Transverse Ranges rotate?

The Eastern Transverse Ranges, adjacent to and southeast of the big left bend of the San Andreas fault, southern California, form a crustal block that has rotated clockwise in response to dextral shear within the San Andreas system.

Where is the chocolate mountain range?

The Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range occupies most of the 75-km-long part of the Chocolate Mountains that li es between Salt Creek to the north and California State Highway 78 to the south.

When did the San Andreas fault occur?

The San Andreas Fault. The presence of the San Andreas fault was brought dramatically to world attention on April 18 , 1906 , when sudden displacement along the fault produced the great San Francisco earthquake and fire. This earthquake, however, was but one of many that have resulted from episodic displacement along the fault throughout its life ...

How long is the San Andreas fault?

The entire San Andreas fault system is more than 800 miles long and extends to depths of at least 10 miles within the Earth.

Where are the plates that meet on the Earth's surface?

Two of these moving plates meet in western California; the boundary between them is the San Andreas fault.

Which plate is the fault that cuts through rocks in California?

The Pacific Plate (on the west) moves northwestward relative to the North American Plate (on the east), causing earthquakes along the fault. The San Andreas is the "master" fault of an intricate fault network that cuts through rocks of the California coastal region. The entire San Andreas fault system is more than 800 miles long ...

Which faults are located southeast of Cajon Pass?

Southeastward from Cajon Pass several branching faults, including the San Jacinto and Banning faults, share the movement of the crustal plates. In this stretch of the fault zone, the name "San Andreas" generally is applied to the northeastern most branch.

What is the displacement of a block on the opposite side of the San Andreas fault?

Geologists refer to this type fault displacement as right-lateral strike-slip.

How many feet was the road across the head of Tomales Bay?

During the 1906 earthquake in the San Francisco region, roads, fences, and rows of trees and bushes that crossed the fault were offset several yards, and the road across the head of Tomales Bay was offset almost 21 feet, the maximum offset recorded. In each case, the ground west of the fault moved relatively northward.

What is the San Andreas fault system?

The San Andreas fault system (SAFS) consists of over a dozen faults that accommodate motion between the North American and Pacific Plates (Fig. 1 A ). The transform boundary initiated about 30 million years ago when a spreading ridge separating the Pacific and Farallon Plates intersected with the North American continental crust near what is now Los Angeles, California ( Fig. 1 B). The SAFS grew bilaterally along the continental margin, contributing to the breakup of the Farallon plate, with the surviving pieces named the Juan de Fuca Plate to the north and the Cocos and Rivera Plates to the south ( Fig. 1 B). As it grew some 1300 km in length, the fault system stepped inland, incorporating a swath of the North American Plate that now reaches 200 km into the western United States and Mexico, before stepping back to the Rivera triple junction along the Gulf of California. Today, the SAFS roughly mimics the shape of the California coast. Due to differences in the fault geometry, fault activity, and seismicity, the SAFS is typically split into three main sections: southern, central, and northern. In the south, a broad network of subparallel SAFS faults connects the extensional domain of the Gulf of California to faults that cut continental crust. The Cerro Prieto, Laguna Salada, and Agua Blanca are the southernmost, and these expand northwest to the Imperial, the main San Andreas fault (SAF), the San Jacinto fault (SJF), and slower Elsinore, Rose Canyon-Newport Inglewood, and offshore fault systems ( Fig. 1 A). The widening of the transform boundary is related to the Big Bend of the fault that occurs between about 33° and 35°N, where the main trace of the SAF trends 30°–40° more westerly than its average 320° trajectory. This configuration produces a broad region of compressional tectonics in southern California. By comparison, the SAFS in central California is geometrically simple, dominated by motion on the SAF and lesser motion on the Hosgri-San Gregorio offshore system. The latter provides a minor linkage between the broader fault network around the Big Bend and the northern SAF. Behaviorally, the central SAF is unique, as most of the fault slip rate is accommodated by aseismic creep. The northern SAFS is composed of a series of subparallel strike-slip faults that expand eastward from the main SAF. The Calaveras, Hayward, Rodgers Creek, Maacama faults, and lesser Green Valley, West Napa fault system, and Bartlet Springs fault all extend northward toward complex faulting around the Mendocino Triple Junction ( Fig. 1 A).

Which plate is the San Andreas fault?

Here the San Andreas merges with the Mendocino fault zone and extends out to sea as a transform fault that separates the Juan de Fuca plate from the Pacific plate ( Figure 16.3 ). From Cape Mendocino the San Andreas Fault extends southward just off the coastline before reaching land again at Point Arena.

Which fault has the best record of paleoearthquakes?

4.21.2.3.1 The southern San Andreas fault paleoearthquake record. The San Andreas fault in California, United States, has perhaps the best documented record of paleoearthquakes of any fault in the world (Grant and Lettis, 2002 ).

Is the San Andreas fault continuous?

As with the Wasatch Fault in Utah, and with any large fault, the surface trace of the San Andreas is not continuous. Instead, the surface trace is segmented such that individual fault segments may act independently of one another. One or several segments may break during an earthquake.

Where does the San Andreas transform system end?

Although the San Andreas Fault proper ends along the eastern side of the Salton Sea, the greater San Andreas transform system continues southward. Southwest of where the San Andreas Fault ends, another strike-slip fault, the Imperial Valley Fault (27), appears in the Imperial Valley south of the Salton Sea.

Is the San Andreas fault displaced?

With continued displacement, all land areas west of the San Andreas Fault, including Baja California and the city of Los Angeles, will be displaced northward along the California coast. As Baja California is displaced northward, the Gulf of California will, over time, widen to become part of the open Pacific Ocean.

What is the Parkfield section of the San Andreas fault?

The Parkfield section of the San Andreas fault (SAF) is an ideal segment for the peculiar aspects of fault rheology, characterized by a progressive decrease in creep rate and slip mode change. The intense multidisciplinary investigations carried out in past decades make this fault segment the most investigated so far in the world. Consequently, numerous tomographic models have been published using different datasets and techniques that all agree with some heterogeneities of the fault structure (i.e., Thurber et al., 2004 ).