![inside san andreas fault inside san andreas fault](http://sepwww.stanford.edu/oldsep/joe/fault_images/lpoffset.gif)
“There are things coming together, things moving just side to side. “That actually tells us a lot more about how the fault is moving through time,” he says. Haeussler says part of the goal is to understand the hazards and appreciate the impact they could have, as well as understanding the structure of the fault. We took many real-life road trips along this massive fault. In addition to the usual research on earthquakes, geology, and magnetism from academic articles and scientific journals, my husband and I took many trips to the actual San Andreas fault itself. The research for the upcoming novel, San Andreas Calling, was intense. This year, USGS partnered with NOAA to map the final and deepest section of the fault system. Dear readers, the San Andreas Fault is real. “I mean the San Andreas is famous and they make action movies about it for its big earthquake potential in California, but we have the exact same fault system offshore of southeast Alaska and it's been vastly under-appreciated as an earthquake hazard because it's entirely offshore and there's not that many people living nearby.” Still, Haeussler says this fault has produced earthquakes as large as 8.1, and it’s been active for the past 100 years. “I like to call it the San Andreas of the north,” says Peter Haeussler, a research geologist with USGS. This fault runs offshore from Vancouver, Canada to the Fairweather Range in Southeast Alaska.
![inside san andreas fault inside san andreas fault](https://urbanmoms.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/DSC_45301.jpg)
Geological Survey has mapped the Queen Charlotte-Fairweather Fault system. The more scientists know about the faults that cause these earthquakes, the more prepared communities can be. The Garlock is a left-lateral strike-slip fault. It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is right-lateral strike-slip (horizontal). A strike slip fault moves primarily in a horizontal direction during an earthquake. The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly 1,200 kilometers (750 mi) through California. Other segments regularly slip, producing small earthquakes. The San Andreas is a right-lateral strike slip fault and is the main expression of the boundary between the Pacific and North American tectonic plates, which are moving slowly and continuously relative to each other. These two plates are moving horizontally, slowly sliding past one another. Some portions exhibit slow, gradual displacement known as fault creep. The San Andreas Fault System, which crosses California from the Salton Sea in the south to Cape Mendocino in the north, is the boundary between the Pacific Plate (that includes the Pacific Ocean) and North American Plate (that includes North America). Displacement occurs along discrete segments 100 to 200 kilometers long.
![inside san andreas fault inside san andreas fault](https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/rtr2jz9o.jpg)
The Alaska Earthquake Center website says they report an earthquake roughly every 15 minutes. San Andreas is the most studied fault system in the world. Alaska is known for earthquakes, big and small.