What type of fault is the San Andreas and what major bounday does it represent?
372742
it is a strike-slip fault residing on the border of the pacific and north american tectonic plates
1074898
Found this on Wikipedia, "The earthquake is considered an intraplate earthquake because it occurred a great distance from any plate boundary"
775865
This type of faulting is common in areas of compression, along the Washington coast. \n\nin the Coast Range-Great Valley Boundary Zone.\n\nGreat Valley thrust fault system \n\nOak Ridge fault system\n\nPleito thrust fault
633646
Mount Wilshire (if you are referring to Wilshire Mountain, or Wilshire peak, near San Bernadino) is in the San Bernadino mountains.  These were formed by tectonic activity, not volcanic.  There is a blind thrust fault at the base of both the san bernadino and san gabriel mountains, that accommodates the motion resulting from the NW/SE -moving San Andres fault shifting to the west.  Since the pacific plate is moving NW relative to the north american plate, in the LA area, where the boundary fault trends east-west, the LA basin is being pushed against the North american plate.  This push results in a thrust fault, as the pacific plate here piles up against the N-A plate.
443354
Yes! San Diego has several major faults in the area and could experience a catastrophic earthquake(s) up to 7.7 on the Richter Scale.\n\nGod should be spelled B-I-G B-A-N-G\nPBrax@netscape.com
911985
Actually  the Santa Monica fault and the Hollywood fault are considered separate:\n\nSee the map here (101 and 102 in the south of the map)\nhttp://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/qfaults/ca/lax.html
121746
Most earthquakes are causally related to compressional or tensional stresses built up at the margins of the huge moving lithospheric plates that make up the earth's surface (see lithosphere). The immediate cause of most shallow earthquakes is the sudden release of stress along a fault, or fracture in the earth's crust, resulting in movement of the opposing blocks of rock past one another. These movements cause vibrations to pass through and around the earth in wave form, just as ripples are generated when a pebble is dropped into water. Volcanic eruptions, rockfalls, landslides, and explosions can also cause a quake, but most of these are of only local extent. Shock waves from a powerful earthquake can trigger smaller earthquakes in a distant location hundreds of miles away if the geologic conditions are favorable.
1057941
Drive Interstate Highway 5 from just south of Gilroy California to L.A. and you'll be right on the fault line. The fault also extends into the Pacific where it meets the bottom of the ocean north of San Fransisco. All of these places are of course in California.
1078990
Go to www.usgs.gov.  It's a great site that gives you all sorts of information about earthquaktes, faultlines, etc. I'm not sure if you can view all of North America, but as there are so many faultlines, it may be best to view it in smaller areas.  Good luck and enjoy exploring!
409571
The exact location of an earthquake.
742010
Earthquakes: \nIt all comes down to stress and strain from the interaction of different plates, chiefly at the boundaries. It is not 'the plates rubbing together' as many people say; or at least that's a very simplistic view.\n\nPlate tectonics causes stress on the continents and oceans, all over the surface of the earth. In some places, the stress is very small (usually within the plates). Elsewhere, the stress is high, usually where the plates meet each other. Since each plate moves, when two come in contact, the stress each other. They can push on each other and cause compressional stress, they can pull with extensional stress, and they can slide past or shear each other with tensional stress.\n\nFaulting, causing earthquakes, comes from the fact that this stress is building up all the time, but rocks and continents are strong materials. Just like hitting a rock with a small hammer, you do put stress on it, but a small amount. It would take a sledgehammer to put enough strain (effects and accumulation of stress) to build up and cause breakage. In the earth, the area around an active fault builds up strain from the stress of plate tectonics. Most faults become locked, because of this strength, and thus can not release their strain. Away from the fault, the stress produces very small and slow movement of the rock masses as a whole. Eventually, the strain is too much and the rest of the plate has moved too far and the fault releases the strain build-up all at once in a big stress release called an earthquake. This is called the elastic rebound theory, and it explains most (but not all) movements.\n\nThis is why an earthquake's size is relative to the fault size. The bigger the fault, the bigger the strain build up, and the bigger the release in an earthquake. Subduction zones and collision zones, where large portions of plates actually can rub together as a whole, have the really big earthquakes, like the 2004 Sumatra earthquake. In other plate boundaries, the entire plate boundary does not act together, so the faults become spread out and many faults take up the strain from the tectonic stress, like with the San Andreas Fault in California (it only takes up ~3/4 of the stress between the plates).\n\nEarthquakes are really tricky things; there is still so much we need to learn. As of now, there is no way to predict them, but we can say where the danger is highest and about how long between events.
717054
Try: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/monitoring/anss/ for definitions.
667349
Geologic faults or simply faults are planar rock fractures which show evidence of relative movement. Large faults within the Earth's crust are the result of shear motion and active fault zones are the causal locations of most earthquakes. Earthquakes are caused by energy release during rapid slippage along faults. The largest examples are at tectonic plate boundaries, but many faults occur far from active plate boundaries. Since faults usually do not consist of a single, clean fracture, the term fault zone is used when referring to the zone of complex deformation associated with the fault plane.\n\nThe two sides of a fault are called the hanging wall and footwall. By definition, the hanging wall occurs above the fault and the footwall occurs below the fault.\n\n\nStrike-slip faults\nThe fault surface is usually near vertical and the footwall moves either left or right or laterally with very small vertical motion. Strike-slip faults with left-lateral motion are also known as sinistral faults. Those with right-lateral motion are also known as dextral faults. A special class of strike-slip faults is the transform faults which are a plate tectonics feature related to spreading centers such as mid-ocean ridges.\n\n(i wish i could type the photo i have as well)
299539
The USGS has an interactive fault map on their site. See the Source link below.
276691
The USGS has diagrams of earthquake faults and what they look like during a quake.\n\nThe National Park Service has a good map of the various plates that make up the Earth's crust.
403621
In a nutshell, their is no way to predict earthquakes because there are little to no warnings signs. For example in California, This is a transform fault where two plates are sliding past each other... Eventually the stress builds up so much that it moves a lot at one time.. This is what causes Earth Quakes there, and when they happen they are devastating... We just cant tell when the stress is so much that an earthquake is going to happen.. It is not possible and probably will never be.
950164
The entire San Andreas fault system is more than 800 miles long and extends to depths of at least 10 miles within the Earth.