Scientists find sharp seismic line hidden under Alaska: ScienceAlert

In 2002, a massive earthquake in central Alaska was felt as far away as Seattle.

This giant earthquake even generated standing waves that destroyed boats in Washington state.

This quake, known as the 2002 Denali earthquake, was a seismic reminder of how much force lies beneath our feet, and how much of its impact can be felt over the long term.

Now, a team of seismologists has tracked down the possible origin of this earthquake. They published their findings in The Seismic Record, a journal of the Seismological Society of America.

They used machine learning to create a catalog of earthquakes from data captured at stations near the central extension of the Denali Fault and the Alaska Range suture zone.

These quakes followed a clean line — or as scientists described it, a “very sharp edge” — along the subducting Yakutat slab.

Scientists already knew that the Yakutat plate was subducting (sliding under) the North American plate, but they had never been able to trace its edge in such clear detail.

A machine-learning-based catalog of seismic activity recorded between 2018 and 2021, along with tectonic tremor, has revealed the outlines of the Yakutat microplate. (Miller et al., Seismic Record, 2026)

To make matters more complicated, these are the only two pieces of land involved in the traffic jam: The Pacific Plate is part of the collision as well.

Some major faults in the North American plate add to the tectonic buildup, including the Denali Fault after which the 2002 earthquake was named.

Lead author Megan Miller, a seismologist at the Australian National University, says the machine learning aspect of the study was essential to detecting the Yakutat Edge.

She says this revealed hidden information in the data that was difficult to see using traditional methods.

This involved a series of earthquakes 250 kilometers (about 155 miles) long, running in a straight line from northwest to southeast.

3D diagram showing the tectonic interpretation of the newly defined edge of the Yakutat plate along profile A–A’ (shown on map of the area). (Miller et al., Seismic Record, 2026)

“Thousands of previously undetected small earthquakes form a prominent line array that illuminates the fine edge of the subducting Yakutat microplate and identifies the location of a plate shape change that reflects a change in stress state,” Miller and colleagues report.

By exploring seismic noise data collected between earthquakes, the team was able to map the edge of the Yakutak plate in unprecedented detail.

This revealed that the plate extends much further beneath the North American plate than we previously knew. In fact, it even reaches below the Denali fault.

The constant collision of plates creates enormous mechanical stress in the region, and the way their structures interact appears to have a major influence on the patterns of earthquakes and volcanism in south-central Alaska.

Miller and his team believe this busy intersection of plates paved the way for the 2002 magnitude 7.9 Denali earthquake, which was the most powerful shock ever recorded in Alaska’s interior.

“We suggest that the northeastern edge of the Yakutat microplate, imaged here just below the curved section of the fault, influenced the core of the 2002 event,” the authors suggest.

They believe that seismic stress from plate collisions and subduction could propagate across the Denali Fault.

The findings also support theories that the Yakutat slab had a role in forming volcanic fields in the region, which is relatively recent in geological terms.

RELATED: A giant seismic wave bounced off the Earth’s core and may have transformed Japan

“Given the new data documenting the lateral extent of the Yakutat microplate presented here, we suggest that the Quaternary onset of volcanic fields around the northern and northeastern edges of the imaged Yakutat microplate record the re-establishment of the mantle wedge about 1 million years ago,” the researchers conclude.

The research has been published in the Seismic Record.

This article was fact-checked by Carly Casella and edited by Peter Dockrell. While we take pride in our process, we are only human. If you discover an error, please let us know.

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