Scientists have mapped one of the biggest threats to Earth in the Pacific Northwest

Scientists have mapped one of the world's most dangerous locations in unprecedented detail: a 600-mile geological boundary off the Pacific Northwest coast.

Along this perilous stretch, called the Cascadia Subduction Zone, two pieces of Earth's crust are sliding against each other, building stresses capable of unleashing a catastrophic 9.0-magnitude earthquake and generating a tsunami, with waves up to 40 feet high.

Because scientists don't know when that day will come, they are preparing by trying to better understand the geology.

To do this, the 235-foot-long ship sailed for 41 days along the coast of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia in the summer of 2021, sending sound waves into the depths of the ocean and recording their echoes with a “streamer” — a distance of 9 miles. Long waterproof cable contains 1200 professional microphones. Similar to the way doctors use ultrasound to see inside the body, they used the data to build a comprehensive map of underwater geology in a study published Friday in the journal Science Advances. The new resource will help scientists understand the range of earthquake and tsunami scenarios, and will help policymakers develop building codes that protect people.

The entire region, stretching from Northern California to Vancouver Island, is at risk. But scientists have found that the geometry of the fault off the coast of Washington, where the fault is flat, smooth, closer to the surface and extends farther offshore, may be particularly vulnerable.

“I'm excited to use these results to ensure that the seismic estimates I produce are as accurate as possible,” said Erin Wirth, a USGS seismologist who was not involved in the study. “I'll be busy now.”

The focus is on the quiet Cascadia subduction zone

For hundreds of years, the Cascadia subduction zone was quiet. But on January 26, 1700, the earth shook. Japanese historical records show that an “orphan” tsunami traveled across the Pacific Ocean, without a previous earthquake. Native American oral history describes earth shaking and sea flooding. Analysis of tree rings from “ghost forests” that died when the ground suddenly calmed down has helped scientists determine the date. Scientists estimate that on that day more than three centuries ago, an earthquake measuring 9 on the Richter scale occurred.

This fault zone is considered dangerous because it is a “mega-thrust” fault. One piece of the Earth's crust, a tectonic plate called the Juan de Fuca plate, sinks beneath the North American continental plate. These plates move at the rate of nail growth, but they also get stuck and create increased pressure. The 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan and the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami occurred in subduction zones.

But to understand earthquakes, details are important. Seismologists usually learn these details by observing smaller earthquakes that emanate from subduction zones. Since Cascadia has been eerily quiet in recent human history, many details remain a mystery.

“We had models of what the fault zone looked like, but they weren't based on any data related to a large portion of the margins, they were based on small pieces of data and high-old data,” said Susan Carbut, a marine seismologist at Lamont University-Columbia School of Climate Science. the quality”. Doherty Earth Observatory, which led the study. “It's as if you had Coca-Cola bottles on your eyes, had them removed, and got the right prescription. Now you can see where the fault area is. Not surprisingly, the surface of the crack is much more complex than the image we had before.”

Danger zone off the coast of Washington

The new study is expected to be the first of many scientific papers from the new data set, but scientists have already made some key findings. There is a particularly flat and smooth section of the fault, which extends from Washington state to southern Vancouver Island. In other similar fault systems around the world, these areas often cause the largest and most destructive earthquakes. This part of the fault is also shallower and closer to the surface than previous models, which could make it more dangerous, Wirth said.

Scientists also found four segments along the fault, deepening the question of whether the entire fault will go through at once, or whether segments could rupture individually.

“This is the messy question, where the answer is more like: Sometimes it does one thing, sometimes it does another,” said Harold Tobin, a seismologist at the University of Washington and an author of the study. Either scenario would constitute a major natural disaster, and could be the difference between a magnitude 9 earthquake and two magnitude 8 earthquakes. Tobin pointed to a pair of massive earthquakes that struck Japan in 1944 and 1946, in which two different parts of a fault ruptured in a short time, creating deadly tsunamis.

Kelin Wang, a research scientist with the Canadian Geological Survey, has already begun using the data to better understand how tsunamis form.

“It's a very rich dataset that provides a lot of information in many directions,” Wang said.

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