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The Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, USA, and British Columbia, Canada, could be among the hardest hit locations in the event of a future megathrust earthquake along the Pacific coast.
A new study led by Simon Fraser University earth scientist Andy Calvert and published in Nature Geoscience this week indicates the depth of the fault between the two tectonic plates forming the Earth’s surface in the Pacific Northwest is seven kilometres deeper than previously proposed.
Calvert speculates it may mean part of the fault’s locked zone — where a megathrust earthquake can occur — could be beneath the Olympic Peninsula.
The section runs north-south from Victoria on Vancouver Island to southern Washington state. Scientists call it a transient slip zone because the fault between two plates slips gradually every 14 months or so. This gradual slip takes place over a two-week period and triggers tremors that are so small people don’t notice them.
Acknowledgements
We thank G. Abers for providing the geometry of the CAFE teleseismic profile and H. Kao for providing some tremor locations in Canada. This project was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and US Geological Survey through grant 06HQGR0029. The acquisition of the various field data was supported by the US Geological Survey, the Geological Survey of Canada, the National Science Foundation, and several US and Canadian universities. Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-program laboratory managed and operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin Company, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration, under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.
Originally posted by westcoast
Man... I got some crazy P waves from what has to be this quake (5.9 atlantic ridge). I don't get it. In all my time watching GEE I've never seen the P waves this big from something under a 6 mag, and this has to be the second round? (2nd wave)...because I just came back to my computer and saw it and immediately pulled up USGS expecting a big one somewhere.
Same thing happened with the quake in the gulf, also a 5.9.
*scratching my head.....*
MAP 5.1 2011/07/29 12:32:18 -23.728 -179.657 501.3 SOUTH OF THE FIJI ISLANDS
MAP 5.1 2011/07/29 08:19:10 -23.399 -179.886 538.5 SOUTH OF THE FIJI ISLANDS
MAP 5.2 2011/07/29 07:50:58 -23.643 179.722 552.1 SOUTH OF THE FIJI ISLANDS
MAP 6.7 2011/07/29 07:42:23 -23.651 179.822 521.7 SOUTH OF THE FIJI ISLANDS