The Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) has a movie produced by CalTech, of the predicted ground shaking from yesterday's 5.1 magnitude quake.
Unfortunately, the movie only shows southern California. The shock waves can clearly be seen heading east and northeast into Arizona, but Arizona is not included in analysis of the effects of earthquakes generated in California or Baja.
The earthquakes are occ
urring near the Cerro Prieto geothermal field, which lies in a pull-apart stepover between the Cerro Prieto and Imperial faults.
This fault system is very complex, with a mix of a spreading zone, it's ending at the Salton Sea, and strike faults. I'm wondering if the long term trend will be for the Coachella valley to become connected with the rifting zone - or is the Coachella valley and old rifting zone that had once connected with the old Death Valley rifting zone, but since split apart by the Mojave upper desert transform faults.
ReplyDeleteAre the Landers and Hector faults old or future rift faults? Do they connect the Coachella and thus Salton zones in any way. Do they connect those in some way to the Death Valley rift system?
Just a thought or two.