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A map of the Juan de Fuca plate with noted seismic incidents, including the 2001 Nisqually earthquake. The Juan de Fuca plate is bounded on the south by the Blanco fracture zone (running northwest off the coast of Oregon), on the north by the Nootka Fault (running southwest off Nootka Island, near Vancouver Island, British Columbia) and along the west by the Pacific plate (which covers most of ...
The Juan de Fuca Ridge is a mid-ocean spreading center and divergent plate boundary located off the coast of the Pacific Northwest region of North America, named after Juan de Fuca. The ridge separates the Pacific Plate to the west and the Juan de Fuca Plate to the east. It runs generally northward, with a length of approximately 500 kilometres ...
The plates that host the fractures are Nazca, Pacific, Antarctic, Juan de Fuca and Cocos among others. Fracture zones being subducted under Southern and Central America are generally southwest–northeast oriented reflecting the relative motion of Cocos, Nazca and the Antarctic plates.
Western Washington lies over the Cascadia subduction zone, where the Juan de Fuca plate is subducting towards the east (see diagram, right). This is being obliquely overridden by the North American plate coming out of the northeast, which has formed a bend in the subducting plate and in the forearc basin above it.
The magnitude of a megathrust earthquake is proportional to length of the rupture along the fault. The Cascadia subduction zone, which forms the boundary between the Juan de Fuca and North American plates, is a very long sloping fault that stretches from mid-Vancouver Island to Northern California. [18]
It appears to have an epicenter at the triple junction of the Pacific, North American and Juan de Fuca tectonic plates. The earthquake was among the largest recorded in California in recent years .
The Juan de Fuca plate, created at the spreading ridge southwest of the triple junction, is moving at a rate of 45.7 mm/yr at an azimuth of 244˚ in relation to the North American plate, and the Pacific plate is moving at 58.6 mm/yr in relation to the Juan de Fuca plate. [2]
The Cascadia subduction zone is where the oceanic Juan de Fuca, Gorda and Explorer Plates subduct under the continental North American plate. The oceanic Pacific plate subducts under the North American plate (composed of both continental and oceanic sections) forming the Aleutian Trench.