Mover Mike

My friend Robert Somerville calls my attention to an article in the NewScientistEnvironment that says the San Andreas fault is a victim. It's the Cascadia Subduction Zone's fault.

Chris Goldfinger and colleagues at Oregon State University, Corvallis, analysed sediment records from deep sea canyons that stretched back over the last three thousand years, looking for the disturbed strata that are the hallmarks of big earthquakes.

They found evidence that "...the massive Cascadia quakes – eight of which Goldfinger estimates exceeded magnitude 9.0 on the Richter scale – trigger events that top out around magnitude 7.9 along the San Andreas by stress transfer."

Their evidence also suggests that the Cascadia is 90 years overdue for a "big one".