fault lines in puget sound

[69] The principal zone of faulting extends from the Woods Creek Fault to the Granite Falls Fault Zone (GFFZ), slightly offset from the WCF and running under the town of Granite Falls. [88] (See the adjacent map. Active faults and earthquakes in Washington state Seismic Scenario Catalog NEHRP site class and liquefaction susceptibility Seismic design categories Hazardous Minerals Lahar Hazards Landslides and landforms Inactive and abandoned mines Contact Us Susan Schnur Editor-in-Chief 360-701-6122 DNR is led by Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz The lowest exposed strata of Tiger Mountain, the mid-Eocene marine sediments of the Raging River formation, may be correlative with the SWCC. A Puget Sound Fault running down the center of Puget Sound (and Vashon Island) was once proposed,[220] but seems to have not been accepted by the geological community. [102] Or the Crescent margin may simply (and quietly) just run south-southeast under Seattle to the WRZ. [203] This line is the southernmost of a band of NE trending faults and topographical lineaments that extend from the Oregon coast into the North Cascades. ), and headed for the definitely active Saint Helens Zone; this appears to be a large-scale structure. Can be formed by differential erosion of adjacent hard and soft rock; by localized erosion, for example at the edge of a river terrace; by movement of a landslide; or by a shallow earthquake that is large enough to break the Earth's surface. [216], An Everett Fault, running east-northeast along the bluffs between Mukilteo and Everett that is, east of the SWIF and at the southern edge of the Everett Basin has been claimed, but this does not appear to have been corroborated.[217]. [49] Yet it is also notable that "most seismicity in the northern Puget Sound occurs along and southwest of the southern Whidbey Island fault at typical depths of 1527 km within the lower part of the Crescent Formation. [43] Just south of Victoria, British Columbia it intersects the west-striking Devils Mountain Fault (reviewed above), and either merges with it,[44] or crosses (and possibly truncates) it to connect with the Leech River Fault. In the wedge model of Pratt et al. [191] How they might be connected is unknown. This map shows areas of seismic risk from high (red) to low (grayish-green). [139] The Dewatto linement extends from the western end of the Tacoma fault (see map immediately above) northward towards Green Mountain at the western end of the Seattle fault. The San Juan Island and Leach River faults crossing the southern end of Vancouver Island are significant and undoubtedly connected with the DarringtonDevils Mountain and Southern Whidbey Island faults, and certainly of particular interest to the residents of Victoria, B.C. 0 magnitude subduction earthquake off the Washington coast would generate a tsunami capable of submerging not only coastal areas but also most of the Puget Sound shoreline . There is a general pattern where most of these faults partition a series of basins and uplifts, each about 20km wide. There is evidence that the Tacoma Fault connects with the White River River Fault (WRF) via the EPZ and Federal Way, under the Muckleshoot Basin (see map),[137] and thence to the Naches River Fault. 6) Click "Plot" Draw. The northern end of the Crescent Formation (aka Metchosin Formation) has been identified as the eastwest trending Leech River Fault on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. [192] Indeed, it is mainly by their seismicity that these faults are known and have been located, neither showing any surface faulting. [80], In the crowded field of active or potentially active fault zones that have been discovered in the lower Snoqualmie Valley, the Cherry Creek fault zone is particularly notable because east of Duvall[81] it passes through a hotspot of active seismicity, including the 1996 '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000057-QINU`"'ML 5.3 Duvall earthquake. The worst of the tsunami would hit the Pacific Coast and San Juan Islands area but the interior of Puget Sound between Edmonds, Tacoma, and Hoodsport could see waves 10 feet or higher, the. It stands out in regard of its eastwest orientation, depth to bedrock, and hazard to an urban population center. Black squares are urban sewer outfalls, which don't match the bubble plumes' locations. These include (from north to south, see map) the: Devils Mountain Fault Strawberry Point and Utsalady Point faults Southern Whidbey Island Fault (SWIF) If the pattern is continued to the southwest, along cross-section A-A' in Pratt's figure 11 (and missing the mapped trace of the Doty Fault), then the next basin is at Grays Harbor (not shown here). Document name Date Description Additional versions; 2809: 4/1/2021: . [6] The first definite indications of most of these faults came from gravitational mapping in 1965,[7] and their likely existence noted on mapping in 1980 and 1985. (E.g., the Olympia Fault is aligned with and appears to be the northernmost member of a set of faults between Olympia and Chehalis that may extend to the Columbia River, and there has been a suggestion that the Tacoma Fault may connect with the White RiverNaches River fault on the east side of the Cascades.[24]). They run . Puget Sound, Washington has had: (M1.5 or greater) 0 earthquakes in the past 24 hours. [197] This anticline, or uplifted fold, and the narrower width of the northern part of the SWCC, reflects an episode of compression of this formation. It is coincident with, and possibly a result of uplift on, the Rattlesnake Mountain Fault Zone (RMFZ), a band of at least eleven faults that show both dip-slip (vertical) and right-lateral strike-slip motion. The Little River Fault (see the QFFDB, Fault 556) is representative of an extensive zone of faults along the north side of the Olympic Peninsula and in the Strait of Juan de Fuca (likely connected with the fault systems at the south end of Vancouver Island, see fault database map), but these lie west of the crustal blocks that underlie the Puget Lowland, and again their possible impact on the Puget Sound region is unknown. Read More. According to the recent seismological studies, the Seattle Fault is believed to be a zone of thrust or reverse faults that strikes through Seattle in the densely populated Puget Lowland of western Washington (Johnson et al., 1999). Harold Tobin, . [42] Marine seismic reflection surveys show it striking northwest across the eastern end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. This is an important observation because the Strawberry Point, Utsalady Point, Southern Whidbey Island, and various other unnamed faults lying between the DDMFZ and the OWL all of which converge at the western end of the DDMFZ seem to be intermediate versions of the DDMFZ.[34]. . 4) Drag square on line to include events to plot. But it does not appear that there have been studies of the deeper structure of these faults, or whether there has been any recent activity. [74], Early Eocene igneous units in the area appear to be part of a 49- to 44- Ma magmatic belt that appeared just after the arrival of Siletzia, and possibly associated with that event. Subsidence dated to between AD 1445 and 1655 has been reported in Mud Bay (just west of Olympia). In particular, to the southeast of Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier they reflect a regional pattern of NNW oriented faulting, including the Entiat Fault in the North Cascades and the Portland Hills and related faults around Portland (see QFFDB fault map). Seven times in the past 3,500 years, the CSZ has buckled and fractured to produce an earthquake so massive that it left a mark in the geologic record. Puget Sound and San Juan islands. Some upper-crustal formations (such as the Western and Eastern Melange Belts, see, There is a general north or northeast directed compression within the Lowland causing folds, which eventually break to become, This page was last edited on 11 January 2023, at 17:28. A principal finding is that "[c]rustal seismicity in the southern Puget Sound region appears to be controlled by a key block of Crescent Formation occurring just south of the Seattle fault. [114] An early view was that "the Seattle Fault appears to be truncated by the Hood Canal fault and does not extend into the Olympic Mountains". Strands of the east-striking Devils Mountain Fault cross the northern tip of Whidbey Island at Dugualla Bay and north side of Ault Field (Whidbey Island Naval Air Station). King County Emergency News. This is only one of a series of active large crustal faults in the Puget Lowland. According to the preeminent model, the "Puget Lowland thrust sheet hypothesis",[26] these faults, etc., occur within a sheet of crust about 14 to 20km deep that has separated from and is being thrust over deeper crustal blocks. [129] The western part is an active eastwest striking north dipping reverse fault that separates the Seattle Uplift and the Tacoma Basin, with approximately 30 miles (50km) of identified surface rupture. [170] Gower, Yount & Crosson (1985), labelling it "structure L", mapped it from Shelton (near the Olympic foothills) southeast to Olympia (pretty nearly right under the state Legislature), directly under the town of Rainier, to a point due east of the Doty Fault, and apparently marking the northeastern limit of a band of southeast striking faults in the Centralia-Chehalis area. [51] It has been speculated that the OS might connect with the seismically active Saint Helens Zone (discussed below), which would imply that the OS is both locked and being stressed, raising the possibility of a major earthquake. 112 earthquakes in the past 365 days. One study compared the relative elevation of two marshes on opposite sides of Whidbey Island, and determined that approximately 3,000 years ago an earthquake of M 6.57.0 caused 1 to 2 meters of uplift. Recent EQ List Get directions. One of these faults, the Sequim Fault Zone (striking east from the town of Sequim), crosses Discovery Bay (and various possible extensions of the Hood Canal Fault) and bounds the Port Ludlow Uplift ("uplift of unknown origin" on the map); it appears to extend to the Southern Whidbey Island Fault. Though a 2012 study[149] interpreted a different variety of tomographic data as showing the Hood Canal fault, other mapping has "found no convincing evidence for the existence of this fault",[150] considers it doubtful,[151] depicted it "with low level of confidence",[152] or omits it entirely. [120] However, the Saddle Mountain fault zone is not quite reciprocally aligned,[121] trending more northerly to where it encounters westeast trending faults (including the Hamma Hamma fault zone) that appear to be a westward extension of the Seattle Fault zone. On the eastern side, where the SWCC is believed to be in contact with pre-Tertiary terranes accreted to the North American craton, matters are different. The Puget Sound faults under the highly populated Seattle and Puget Sound region of Washington state form a regional network of interrelated seismologic geologic faults. This section of the SWIF forms the southwestern side of the Everett Basin[48] (see map), which is notably aseismic in that essentially no shallow (less than 12km deep) earthquakes have occurred there, or on the section of the SWIF adjoining it, in the first 38 years of instrumental recording. This pocket is catching a stream of terranes (crustal blocks about 20 to 30km thick[18]) which the Pacific plate is pushing up the western edge of North America, and in the process imparting a bit of clockwise rotation to southwestern Washington and most of Oregon; the result has been characterized as a train wreck. Faults running on the Snohomish County-Skagit County line and between Port Townsend and Whidbey Island point toward Vancouver Island. This is supported by geologically recent scarps and other signs of active faulting on the Saddle Mountain faults, and also discovery of a geophysical lineament running through Pleasant Harbor (south of Brinnon) that appears to truncate strands of the Seattle Fault. 182-3]", "Western limits of the Seattle fault zone and its interaction with the Olympic Peninsula, Washington", "Seismic reflection imaging across the eastern portions of the Tacoma fault zone", "The western extension of the Seattle fault: new insights from seismic reflection data", "Seismic Characterization of the Seattle and Southern Whidbey Island Fault Zones in the Snoqualmie River Valley, Washington", "Fault number 552, Hood Canal fault zone", "Radiocarbon Ages of Probable Coseismic Features from the Olympic Peninsula and Lake Sammamish, Washington", "Geologic map of the Summit Lake 7.5-minute quadrangle, Thurston and Mason Counties, Washington", "The Olympia structure; ramp or discontinuity? The ultimate driver of the stresses that cause earthquakes are the motions of the tectonic plates: material from the Earth's mantle rises at spreading centers, and moves out as plates of oceanic crust which eventually are subducted under the more buoyant plates of continental crust. Despite not having active plate tectonics, the eastern United States still experiences earthquakes. The western flank of the Seattle Uplift forms a strong gravitational, aeromagnetic, and seismic velocity gradient known as the Dewatto lineament. The Puget Sound Region is crisscrossed by fault lines and zones and also located close to the Cascadia Subduction Zone, where the Juan de Fuca and North American tectonic plates meet.

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fault lines in puget sound