This West Coast earthquake fault's most hazardous section has been named one of the planet's greatest threats.

Imagine two huge pieces of the Earth's outer shell puzzle slowly pushing against each other under the ocean. One piece slides under the other - this is called the subduction zone, and the Cascadia subduction zone is one of the most dangerous regions on the planet.

If the subduction zone gets stuck and slides suddenly, it can cause a major earthquake. This type of earthquake occurs along special cracks called giant faults. Scientists know that in this particular region of the West Coast of the United States, large earthquakes have occurred in the past and can occur again at any time.

Risk of Cascadia Subduction Zone

Coastal communities from Northern California to British Columbia live in the Cascadia Subduction Zone, approximately 600 miles from the coast where the Juan de Fuca Plate is raw to the east. exercise slowly is the fingernager width each year, but the stress it stores is the stress it stores exposes earthquakes strong enough to rattle the skyline and 100 feet of feet to run tsunamis on the coast. Geologists calculate that Cascadia's break releases more energy in minutes in a year than in all human activities.

Geological records show that these enormous events arrive every 500 years, giving or taking hundreds. On January 26, 1700, it was attacked by the last coast long before the skyscrapers and pipelines. The story, carried over by tree rings, coastal marsh deposits, and indigenous communities, records the sudden drop of the night and the arrival of the waves of that night. Modern scientists want to know if the next break is the length of the error or stops with an invisible limit.

In the summer of 2021, listening to the Earth at High Zeff, research vessel Marcus G. Langses sailed almost the entire length of Cascadia, dragging many powerful sound equipment. The instrument emits low-frequency sounds, dense stones permeate, and detailed images of the echo-lacquered structure were over 6 miles below the seabed.

"The models currently used by public institutions were based on a limited range of old data in the 1980s, with low quality," says Suzanne Carbot, a marine geophysicist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, who led the study. "Megathust has much more complex geometry than previously assumed. This study provides a new framework for earthquake and tsunami risk assessment."

Four segments of the Cascadia subduction zone

New images show that Megathust is not a single unbroken scar. Instead, at least four different segments line up, divided by buried errors cut into the coast. Each segment shows its trends, sediment thickness, and cracks.

Cascadia subduction zone coverage and structural framework changes. Click on Bild to enlarge. Credit: Victoria University BC. These crossbarriers can reduce the shaking by blocking breaks or, at worst, failing errors in huge events and leaving them.

"This doesn't mean that only individual segments will break, or that everything will go straight away," said Harold Tobin, a geophysicist at the University of Washington and a co-author of the study. "However, this updates the evidence that there are segmented fractures."

Vancouver's wildcard - Washington

Segments require special attention. It extends from South Vancouver Island to the mouth of the Columbia River, indicating extremely smooth contacts with the marine plate sliding under North America. Smoothness allows stress to fly further in front of the stable due to fewer natural speed ridges.

The computer model shows that a complete break in this route can be pressed on the modified Mercari scale swinging intensity above Puget Sound. In this zone, the interface also hits flat. This means that sections that could break are closer to cities like Seattle and Tacoma under the Olympic Peninsula. This geometry could directly convert offshore movements into stronger shaking on land.

Lessons from Japan

A similar mistake in front of Japan on March 11, 2011, is the coastal defense built for a small earthquake that overwhelmed Fukushima Daiichi. Cascadia has its own personality, but the tragedy of Japan has shown that an underrated segment of engineers and emergency planners can be amazed.

This earthquake also highlighted how infrastructure failures (power losses, flooded roads, chemical runoff) could increase human tributes after shaking. With a new Cascadia card in hand, agents can improve computer simulations testing bridges, hospitals, and energy corridors to test plausible vibration patterns and shaft heights. These results filter to revised building regulations and an increase in the early warning network for earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest.

The earthquake and tsunami

cruise conquered the seabed of roughness and rock types, and these details are sent to wave predictions, and more critics are needed. "As far as tsunami risk is concerned, it is still under work," says Kerin Wang, a research scientist at the Canadian Geological Survey, who was not involved in the study. Wang's

The team has already fed into a new depth profile of a model that calculates whether the seabed will rise or fall in various destructive forms. of Nescowin Ghost Forest on the Oregon Coast. Around 1700, the subduction zone of Cascadia caused a strong earthquake of magnitude 9, which suddenly dropped the coast. When the floor fell, the seawater almost immediately flooded the flowering Sitka spruce forest. The sea buried tree stumps in sand and mud, and kept them beneath the beach for centuries. Click on Bild to enlarge.

When another group converts this application to a tsunami projection, the emergency manager uses the results to update the escape routes published on the Brookings phone mast to Port San Berni. Many coastal residents practice sirens every March.

Preparation for the Subduction Zone Cascadia

Scientists cannot predict the day of Cascadia's next earthquake, but the probability leads to practical decisions. Updated Hazard Cards will inform you where the vertical shelter will be installed, how the school will be modified, and which highways will gain earthquake improvements.