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The Cascadia subduction zone is a 960 km (600 mi) fault at a convergent plate boundary, about 100–200 km (70–100 mi) off the Pacific coast, that stretches from northern Vancouver Island in Canada to Northern California in the United States.
A fault off the Pacific coast could devastate Washington, Oregon and Northern California with a major earthquake and tsunami. ... scientists have warned about the potential of the Cascadia ...
The boundary between the two is known as the megathrust, or the Cascadia subduction zone, fault. “That plate-boundary fault is normally locked, and stresses build up, and then when it lets go ...
The 1700 Cascadia earthquake occurred along the Cascadia subduction zone on January 26, 1700, with an estimated moment magnitude of 8.7–9.2. The megathrust earthquake involved the Juan de Fuca plate from mid- Vancouver Island , south along the Pacific Northwest coast as far as northern California .
A magnitude-9.0 earthquake on the Cascadia fault and the resulting tsunami would kill an estimated 14,000 people in Oregon and Washington, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The arc formed due to subduction along the Cascadia subduction zone. Although taking its name from the Cascade Range , this term is a geologic grouping rather than a geographic one, and the Cascade Volcanoes extend north into the Coast Mountains , past the Fraser River which is the northward limit of the Cascade Range proper.
The Cascadia subduction zone is capable of producing megathrust earthquakes on the order of MW 9.0. Due to the relative plate motions, the triple junction has been migrating northwards for the past 25–30 million years, and assuming rigid plates, the geometry requires that a void, called slab window, develop southeast of the MTJ. [4]
Recent episodes of tremor and slip in the Cascadia region have occurred down-dip of the region ruptured in the 1700 Cascadia earthquake. Since the initial discovery of this seismic mode in the Cascadia region, slow slip and tremor have been detected in other subduction zones around the world, including Japan and Mexico. [5]