Oct. 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 that ends or dissipates without a
clear connection. "We want to know how it formed, why it
formed," says Dr. Kevin P. Furlong, professor of geosciences.
"We know the San Andreas boundary is getting longer as the
Mendocino Triple Junction point moves northward. Right now we
believe that the Eastern California Shear Zone is growing along
with the San Andreas." The Eastern California Shear Zone runs
roughly parallel to the San Andreas Fault from the gulf of
California and is a wide area in western Nevada. The problem is
that so far, no one has identified the northern end of the zone.
Basic plate tectonics requires that the large plates that make
up the Earth's crust move over or under each other, slide above
or below each other, or meet end to end forming large
mountainous plateaus. In the California-Nev