New! Sign up for our free email newsletter.
Reference Terms
from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

San Andreas Fault

San Andreas Fault is a geological fault that spans a length of roughly 800 miles (1287 kilometres) through California, United States. The fault, a right-lateral strike-slip fault, marks a transform boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. All land west of the fault on the Pacific Plate is moving slowly to the northwest while all land east of the fault is moving to the southwest (relatively southeast as measured at the fault) under the influence of plate tectonics. The rate of slippage is approximately of 1/5 inch (0.6 cm) a year. Projected motion indicates that the Gulf of California will expand northward at the same time that the landmass west of the fault, including the Baja California peninsula and the California coast (including Los Angeles) slides past San Francisco, then continuing northwestward as an island mass toward the Aleutian Trench, over a period of perhaps twenty million years.

Related Stories
 


Earth & Climate News

June 9, 2025

For millions of years, large herbivores like mastodons and giant deer shaped the Earth's ecosystems, which astonishingly stayed stable despite extinctions and upheavals. A new study reveals that only twice in 60 million years did environmental ...
Beneath Earth s surface, nearly 3,000 kilometers down, lies a mysterious layer where seismic waves speed up inexplicably. For decades, scientists puzzled over this D' layer. Now, groundbreaking ...
In a world where over a billion smartphones are produced yearly, a team of researchers is flipping the script on electronic waste. Instead of tossing out older phones, they ve demonstrated a groundbreaking approach: turning outdated smartphones into ...
Scientists have built a lab model that visually tracks how microscopic contact points between fault surfaces evolve during earthquake cycles, revealing the hidden mechanics behind both the slow ...
Frogs, salamanders, and other amphibians are not just battling habitat loss and pollution they're now also contending with increasingly brutal heat waves and droughts. A sweeping 40-year study shows a direct link between the rise in extreme weather ...
Researchers found telehealth visits can improve care for cats with feline ...
New research demonstrates that with collaboration between stakeholders, Australia can fully decarbonize its domestic and energy export economies by 2060 -- a feat requiring $6.2 trillion USD and ...
To satisfy the seafood needs of billions of people, offering them access to a more biodiverse array of fish creates opportunities to mix-and-match species to obtain better nutrition from smaller ...
A new study found exposure to specific tiny particles in air pollution during pregnancy are associated with increased risk of various negative birth ...
A new study details processes that keep pollutants aloft despite a drop in ...
Researchers asked patients, some of whom had experienced lower back pain for up to 40 years, if being in nature helped them coped better with their lower back pain. They found that people able to ...
Collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could be triggered with very little ocean warming above present-day, leading to a devastating four meters of global sea level rise to play out over hundreds ...

Latest Headlines

updated 12:56 pm ET