A silent colossus lurks off the Pacific coast, threatening hundreds of miles of coastline with tsunamis and devastating earthquakes.For decades, scientists have warned about the potential of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a megathrust fault that runs offshore along the coast from northern Vancouver Island to Cape Mendocino, California. When the fault — or even a portion of it — next snaps, it will reshape life in Oregon, Washington and Northern California.Of particular concern are signals of massive earthquakes in the region’s geologic history. Many researchers have chased clues of the last “big one”: an 8.7-magnitude earthquake in 1700. They’ve pieced together the event’s history using centuries-old records of tsunamis, Native American oral histories, physical evidence in ghost forests drowned by saltwater and limited maps of the fault.But no one had mapped the fault structure comprehensively — until now. A study published Friday in the journal Science Advances describes data gathered during a 41-day research voyage in which a vessel trailed a miles-long cable along the fault to listen to the seafloor and piece together an image.The team completed a detailed map of more than 550 miles of the subduction zone, down to the Oregon-California border.Their work will give modelers a sharper view of the possible impacts of a megathrust earthquake there — the term for a quake that occurs in a subduction zone, where one tectonic plate is thrust under anoth …
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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnA silent colossus lurks off the Pacific coast, threatening hundreds of miles of coastline with tsunamis and devastating earthquakes.For decades, scientists have warned about the potential of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a megathrust fault that runs offshore along the coast from northern Vancouver Island to Cape Mendocino, California. When the fault — or even a portion of it — next snaps, it will reshape life in Oregon, Washington and Northern California.Of particular concern are signals of massive earthquakes in the region’s geologic history. Many researchers have chased clues of the last “big one”: an 8.7-magnitude earthquake in 1700. They’ve pieced together the event’s history using centuries-old records of tsunamis, Native American oral histories, physical evidence in ghost forests drowned by saltwater and limited maps of the fault.But no one had mapped the fault structure comprehensively — until now. A study published Friday in the journal Science Advances describes data gathered during a 41-day research voyage in which a vessel trailed a miles-long cable along the fault to listen to the seafloor and piece together an image.The team completed a detailed map of more than 550 miles of the subduction zone, down to the Oregon-California border.Their work will give modelers a sharper view of the possible impacts of a megathrust earthquake there — the term for a quake that occurs in a subduction zone, where one tectonic plate is thrust under anoth …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
