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..

For more information about the topic San Andreas Fault, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:

Elastic-rebound theory of earthquakes — In geology, the elastic rebound theory was the first theory to satisfactorily explain earthquakes. Previously it was thought that ruptures of the ...  > read more

Hayward Fault Zone — The Hayward Fault Zone is located in northern California in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is parallel to and east of its more famous (and much ...  > read more

Alpine Fault — The Alpine Fault is a geological fault, known as a right-lateral strike-slip fault, that runs almost the entire length of New Zealand's South Island. ...  > read more

Geologic fault — Geologic faults or simply faults are planar rock fractures which show evidence of relative movement. Large faults within the Earth's crust are the ...  > read more

Related Stories

Earthquake History Key To Interpreting Fault Observations (November 23, 2000) — Fault zone models do not always accurately portray earthquake potential and crustal movement in an area because researchers need to consider local earthquake history, according to a Penn State ...  > read more

Eastern California Shear Zone Puzzles Seismologists (October 19, 2005) — Residents and seismologists in Northern California focus on the San Andreas Fault, but a Penn State researcher thinks more questions should be asked about the Eastern California Shear Zone, a fault ...  > read more

Why Do Earthquakes Stop? (February 6, 2008) — Why do some earthquakes terminate along a fault, while others jump or step-over a gap to another fault? The underlying structure of a fault determines whether an earthquake rupture will jump from one ...  > read more

Volcano-like Tremors Detected Deep Within Earth's Crust Near San Andreas (April 13, 2006) — Tremors within the Earth are usually -- but not always -- related to the activity of a volcano. Now, such vibrations have been recorded nowhere near a volcano, but at a geologic observatory at the ...  > read more

All Earthquake Fault Lines Not Equal (July 3, 2001) — While most scientists assume that both sides of a geologic fault move equal distances during an earthquake, National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded researchers at Pennsylvania State University and ...  > read more

Search ScienceDaily

Underwater Earthquakes