What plate boundary goes through California?

San Andreas Fault
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).

What tectonic plate is Southern California on?

Pacific Plate
What is the San Andreas Fault? The San Andreas Fault is the sliding boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. It slices California in two from Cape Mendocino to the Mexican border. San Diego, Los Angeles and Big Sur are on the Pacific Plate.

Is California near a tectonic plate?

California sits uniquely at the intersection of two major plates, the Pacific Plate and North American Plate. The plate intersection runs up the western coast of North America all the way to Alaska, with the Juan de Fuca plate interjecting its remnants along the Pacific Northwest.

When was the last earthquake in Parkfield CA?

September 28, 2004
The San Andreas fault runs through this town, and six successive magnitude 6 earthquakes occurred on the fault at unusually regular intervals, between 12 and 32 years apart (with an average of every 22 years), between 1857 and 1966. The most recent significant earthquake to occur here happened on September 28, 2004.

What plate boundary is San Francisco on?

Andreas fault
Today the North American/Pacific plate boundary where San Francisco is located is a right lateral transform boundary (the plates are sliding past each other), forming what is perhaps the best-known geologic feature of California, the San Andreas fault zone.

How many fault lines are in California?

There are hundreds of identified faults in California; about 200 are considered potentially hazardous based on their slip rates in recent geological time (the last 10,000 years).

Why is Parkfield CA so important?

The Parkfield area is considered an ideal place to study the earthquake process. The San Andreas Fault (red line) last ruptured here in 1966 (yellow zone). A similar rupture in 1857 was a foreshock to the last great earthquake in southern California, the 1857 Fort Tejon magnitude 7.9 event (pink zone).

What type of fault is Parkfield CA?

Parkfield lies along the San Andreas Fault, one of the longest and most active faults in the United States, which appears in the town as a seasonally dry creek bed. The fault marks the divide between the North American Plate and the Pacific Plate (see plate tectonics ).

What is the ZIP code for Parkfield CA?

The ZIP Code is 93451, and the community is inside area code 805 . Parkfield lies along the San Andreas Fault, one of the longest and most active faults in the United States, which appears in the town as a seasonally dry creek bed.

What type of plate boundary is the San Francisco Bay Area?

Other rocks in the San Francisco Bay Area were originally part of an accretionary wedge, similar to rocks found today in the coastal ranges of the Cascadia Subduction Zone in northern California, Oregon, and Washington. The San Andreas Fault is part of a transform plate boundary that disrupts the topography of an ancient subduction zone.

How often do earthquakes occur in Parkfield CA?

Since at least 1857, Parkfield has experienced a magnitude 6 or greater earthquake about every 22 years. In 1985, the US Geological Survey predicted that there would be a comparably-sized earthquake in this community by 1993, but no such event came until September 28, 2004, when a 6.0 Mw earthquake struck at 10:15 am Pacific Daylight Time.