Sleepy San Andreas Fault near Los Angeles. The researchers have an idea why.

It’s been about three centuries since the last great earthquake in the southern San Andreas Fault, California’s most insidious seismic hazard. For decades, researchers have puzzled over why it took so long. The average interval of large earthquakes along this section of the fault has been 180 years over the past 1,000 years.

While seismologists agree that Southern California is set to kick off the Big One, a group of researchers published a paper Wednesday in the journal Nature that offers a reason for the period of seismic silence along southern San Andreas, the meeting point of tension in the region. Plate tectonics of North America and the Pacific Ocean.

The theory is based on the idea that while tectonic plate friction is the primary driving force behind earthquakes, other factors are involved, including the weight of large bodies of water. Based on previous research, scientists have found a link between the occurrence of large earthquakes and the filling of a lake that has grown and receded over the centuries.

Riley J. said: Candidate in the Department of Geosciences at San Diego State University and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California.

Mr. Hill and his colleagues found that major earthquakes along the southern San Andreas fault tend to occur when a large body of water, Lake Cahuila, swelled or filled with water from the Colorado River in what is now the Coachella and Empire Valleys.

The lake has been drained over the past three centuries and all that remains is the ancient Salton Sea. The paper’s authors believe that the process of emptying and disappearing of the ancient lake fixed the imbalance to some extent.

Lucy Jones, a seismologist and senior scientist at the Dr. Lucy Jones Center for Science and Society, called the explanation “a plausible reason for the current long period since the last earthquake.”

But she said the research “doesn’t make me want to say don’t worry about the next one.”

Dr. Jones was not involved in the study.

One consequence of the three-centuries interval since the last major earthquake, defined as a magnitude 7 or greater, seismologists say, is that more stress has built up as the two tectonic plates move in opposite directions.

“It has accumulated a large amount of energy comparable to a taut rubber band,” Bill Filiposian, a research geologist with the USGS in the San Francisco Bay Area. “We have to expect that the rubber band could break at any time.”

Southern San Andreas, part of a network of faults that stretches across California, has the greatest potential for destruction due to the large number of people who live in the area — 10 million people in Los Angeles County alone. The 1994 Northridge Los Angeles earthquake, with a magnitude of 6.7, killed more than 70 people and caused $20 billion in damage. It was caused by one of several faults that make up the broader San Andreas system, but not because the main San Andreas fault is California’s longest and is capable of a more powerful event.

The research published in Nature, which builds on a paper Dr Philibosian was a writer on in 2011, raises questions about plans to rehabilitate parts of the Salton Sea, which was formed when an irrigation canal burst in the early 20th century. Today it is highly polluted and shrinking, dependent on running water from nearby agricultural irrigation. When the sea dries up, the toxic dust is left behind and floats through the air, posing a danger to nearby residents.

Pumping more water into the Salton Sea could loosen the dust. Recent ideas have included importing desalinated seawater — which last year’s commission rejected — and paying farmers to divert their Colorado River allotments. But a significant change in water level can also lead to seismic activity, according to Dr. Filipozian.

“This earthquake will eventually happen – maybe sooner rather than later – no matter what we do,” she said.

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