The ‘slow and silent’ portion of the San Andreas fault may still pose an earthquake threat

California is a land divided by a 1,287-kilometre (800 mi) rupture known as the San Andreas Fault. It runs north to south across the state near many major cities, and has been responsible for some of America’s most destructive earthquakes.

There are areas in the heart of the state that haven’t seen the fury of complete error, at least not in living memory. Or so he thought.

A new study has uncovered evidence that the “slow and silent” section of the famous fault line could indeed have hosted some impressive tremors fairly recently in history.

While the geologists behind the study insist we shouldn’t be alarmed, the findings should serve as reason to pay closer attention to seismic activity in central California in the future.

“California building codes are good now. Seismic events are inevitable,” says Stephen Cox, a geologist from Columbia University in New York.

“Working like this helps us figure out the biggest event possible, and helps everyone prepare.”

What appears from the surface to be a single rupture in the crust is actually three distinct boundaries where the Pacific and North American tectonic plates come into contact.

The northern and southern sections compress with gigantic forces, releasing in bursts only when small sections give way to the pressure.

When it happens near major infrastructure, the results can be catastrophic: fires set by an earthquake in San Francisco in 1906 killed thousands; An earthquake of magnitude 6.9 near Santa Cruz, California, killed more than 60 people in 1989.

Farther south, Los Angeles County has also seen its fair share of death and destruction as neighboring fault sections have fallen dramatically.

Between these two extremes is a quieter one, with plates embracing at a quiet pace of 26 mm (about 1 inch) per year in what is known as ‘lysular creep’.

With little to force the plates to pause and pressure build up in this section, there is much less risk of a major earthquake.

In fact, no tremor greater than 6 has been recorded at any time in recorded history. Digging deeper, there is no sign that any such earthquake has reached the surface in the past 2,000 years.

This does not mean that there is nothing to worry about.

“The creeping section is a difficult place to do paleontology, because evidence of earthquakes can be easily erased by creep,” says Morgan Page, a USGS seismologist.

The crust of our planet is a complex mixture of geological machines, with vast hidden structures and a network of interconnections between boundaries and separators. Small changes in the quiescent and quiescent parts of the fault can lead to large, distant changes in other areas.

Moreover, the right kind of geological clapping in the north or south can reverberate through the middle in ways that allow changing likes we’ve never seen before.

To better understand how the San Andreas Fault as a whole functions, geologists have used changes in organic matter caused by friction to identify signs of major earthquakes in rocks collected from deep in the central portion of the fault.

Then, analyzing the ratios of radioactive potassium and isotopes of argon allowed the team to estimate the timing of the earthquakes.

Together, the two processes revealed signs of earthquakes in an area of ​​sedimentary rock just over 3 kilometers (about two miles) below the surface. Based on the movements, the team estimates that the number of earthquakes rivals the 6.9-magnitude earthquake near Santa Cruz in 1989.

“If this continues, this is the first evidence of a major seismic rupture in this part of the fault,” Page says.

Surprisingly, some earthquakes occurred less than 3 million years ago. Millions of years in the past may seem like ancient history, but the Earth’s crust is not so quick to change its lines.

Knowing that the creeping section of the San Andreas Fault can grind its teeth when forced is enough evidence that Californians need to remain vigilant from the beast that sleeps under its feet.

This research was published in the Journal of Geology.

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