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The San Andreas Fault is overdue for " the big one , " and the elbow grease by humans to master flooding in the area could be the understanding for the recent lull in temblors , a new study suggests .
Ancient overflow once helped unleashearthquakes on the San Andreas , a group of researchers has find . The southern portion of the error has not live a big earthquake for about 300 years , though , whichmakes one long overdue — the old five major earthquakes in the region pass at approximately 180 - year separation .
Balloon platform aerial photograph shows excavations across a channel offset along the San Andreas Fault in the the Carrizo Plain at the Bidart Site. The jog in the channel between the excavations is the San Andreas Fault.
Over the preceding 100 , man have put in place measure to control floods in the realm to protect property and base , which the researchers say might explain the quake quiet .
implosion therapy possibly fueled faults
To investigate both the cause of these earthquake and the current letup in them , scientists probed the locale where the southern San Andreas Fault ends , theSalton Sea , presently the large lake in California .
Balloon platform aerial photograph shows excavations across a channel offset along the San Andreas Fault in the the Carrizo Plain at the Bidart Site. The jog in the channel between the excavations is the San Andreas Fault.
The area in which the Salton Sea now sits was once home base to elephantine prehistorical freshwater Lake Cahuilla , which once would have dwarfed the Salton Sea by filling the Coachella , Imperial and Mexicali vale of southeastern California and northeast Baja California . By canvas seismic images of deposit layers deposit in this ancient lake , researchers can identify activity such as flooding or disruptions such as earthquakes , which affect how the deposit is laid down .
" We have run short back through fourth dimension and work up one of the longest and most robust seism disk useable , " said researcher Daniel Brothers , a U.S. Geological Survey marine geologist in Woods Hole , Mass.
Their findings suggest that occasional flooding of the lake by the Colorado River during the past 1,200 years actuate earthquake on small error underlying the lake . These , in turn , could have impacted the nearby San Andreas Fault , on the face of it have it to rupture with large quake . [ Related:13 Crazy Earthquake fact ]
The Salton Sea, and the Imperial, Coachella and Mexicali Valleys in the California and Mexico desert. The Salton Sea formed by accident in 1905 when an irrigation canal ruptured, allowing the Colorado River to flood the Salton Basin.
retiring studies had suggested that flooding could trigger seismic activity , such as via rapid filling of lake , " but as far as I love , nobody has presented convincing grounds of this relationship using geologic records , " Brothers told OurAmazingPlanet .
" We did n’t set up out to study the family relationship between implosion therapy and earthquakes — the idea presented itself while we were interpreting our data and realized we could n’t separate the timing of implosion therapy and fault break , " he add .
prominent ' big one ' ?
In the past century , human deviation and control of the Colorado River for municipal and husbandry penury may have contributed to the dearth in temblor presently seen in the southerly San Andreas . One concern regarding this lull is that energy might be building up in the error without floods to serve release that stress .
" We do n’t know if the next quake on theSan Andreas Faultwill be big because of the prolonged quiescent period , " brother said . " We have to hold off and see if we ’ve really readjust the recurrence separation and if the earthquakes are in reality large . "
Other areas that scientists might want to analyze for like effects include prehistoric Lake Bonneville in Utah , Mono Lake in California , the Dead Sea in the Middle East , the Rift Valley lake of East Africa and Lake Baikal in Russia — " really , any tectonically active catchment area filled with body of water , " Brothers allege .
The scientists detail their findings in the June 26 event of the diary Nature Geoscience .
This story was provided by OurAmazingPlanet , a sister site to LiveScience .
