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A fault plane is the plane that represents the fracture surface of a fault. A fault trace or fault line is a place where the fault can be seen or mapped on the surface. A fault trace is also the line commonly plotted on geologic maps to represent a fault. [3] [4] A fault zone is a cluster of parallel faults.
Transform faults are closely related to transcurrent faults and are commonly confused. Both types of fault are strike-slip or side-to-side in movement; nevertheless, transform faults always end at a junction with another plate boundary, while transcurrent faults may die out without a junction with another fault.
Anderson's fault theory also presents a model for seismic interpretation. [7] This model predicts the dip of faults according to their regime classification. [2] Conjugate walls in any fault will share a dip angle with that angle being measured from the top of the hanging wall or the bottom of the foot wall. [2]
When a strike-slip fault is offset along strike such that the resulting bend in the fault hinders easy movement, e.g. a right stepping bend on a sinistral (left-lateral) fault, this will cause local shortening or transpression. Examples include the 'Big Bend' region of the San Andreas Fault, [6] and parts of the Dead Sea Transform. [7]
As illustrated, an earthquake zone may start as a single crack, growing to form many individual cracks and collections of cracks along a fault. The key to fault growth is the concept of a "following force", as conveniently provided for interplate earthquakes, by the motion of tectonic plates. Under a following force, the seismic displacements ...
Simple model for transpression: strike-slip zone with an additional and simultaneous shortening across the zone.Also induces vertical uplift. In geology, transpression is a type of strike-slip deformation that deviates from simple shear because of a simultaneous component of shortening perpendicular to the fault plane.
Another transform fault, the Mendocino Fault (F), runs along the boundary between the Pacific plate and the Gorda plate. Where the three intersect is the seismically active, F-F-T Mendocino triple junction. The Amurian plate, the Okhotsk microplate, and the Philippine Sea plate meet in Japan near Mount Fuji. (see Mount Fuji's Geology)
Some use the term "transform fault" to describe the seismically and tectonically active portion of a fracture zone after John Tuzo Wilson's concepts first developed with respect to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. [2] The term fracture zone has a distinct geological meaning, but it is also used more loosely in the naming of some oceanic features.