San Andreas Fault Set for the 'Big One' (Update)

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A shaded relief map of California highlights (pink lines) sections of the San Andreas fault that ruptured in great earthquakes in 1857 and 1906. The red line denotes the southern part of of the fault that has not produced a major earthquake in at lea ...
A shaded relief map of California highlights (pink lines) sections of the San Andreas fault that ruptured in great earthquakes in 1857 and 1906. The red line denotes the southern part of of the fault that has not produced a major earthquake in at least 300 years. The white box outlines the area of study for the Nature paper.

A researcher investigating several facets of the San Andreas Fault has produced a new depiction of the earthquake potential of the fault’s southern, highly populated section. The new study shows that the fault has been stressed to a level sufficient for the next “big one”—an earthquake of magnitude seven or greater—and the risk of a large earthquake in this region may be increasing faster than researchers had believed, according to Yuri Fialko of Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.


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