fault lines in puget sound

A principal finding is that "[c]rustal seismicity in the southern Puget Sound region appears to be controlled by a key block of Crescent Formation occurring just south of the Seattle fault. [11] Marine seismic reflection surveys on Puget Sound where it cuts across the various faults have provided cross-sectional views of the structure of some of these faults, and an intense, wide-area combined on-shore/off-shore study in 1998 (Seismic Hazards Investigation in Puget Sound, or SHIPS)[12] resulted in a three-dimensional model of much of the subsurface geometry. What makes the DotySalzer Fault (and the short Chehalis Fault striking due east from Chehalis) stand out from the many other faults south of Tacoma is its eastwest strike; the significance of this is not known. 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. Nor does this uplift delineate any significant basin between it and the Devils Mountain Fault. Seven times in the past 3,500 years, the CSZ has buckled and fractured to produce an earthquake so massive that it left a mark in the geologic record. [51] New tsunami simulation predicts flooding on Olympic Peninsula | Tacoma The lowest exposed strata of Tiger Mountain, the mid-Eocene marine sediments of the Raging River formation, may be correlative with the SWCC. The history and capabilities of the Frigid Creek Fault are not known. Scientists Search for New Faults in Puget Sound Black squares are urban sewer outfalls, which don't match the bubble plumes' locations. Turkey's fault line is similar to faults under Puget Sound A magnitude 7.1 earthquake in the Tacoma Fault Zone A plausible scenario for the southern Puget Sound region, Washington May 18, 2010 Citation Information. The Doty fault particularly seems to have gained prominence with geologists since it was associated with an aeromagnetic anomaly,[184] and a report in 2000 credited it capable of a magnitude 6.7 to 7.2 earthquake. South of Monroe the folds of the Rogers Belt are obscured by subsequent volcanic formations, but other faults parallel to the RMFZ (e.g., the Snoqualmie Valley and Johnson's Swamp fault zones) extend the general trend of NNW faulting as far as Monroe. [85] The Tokul Creek Fault (TCF) strikes NNE from Snoqualmie, aligned with a possible offset of the Western Melange Belt[86] and with a valley that cuts through to the Skykomish River; it is now believed to be of regional significance. [Paper No. Strawberry Point and Utsalady Point faults, "The Puget Lowland is a north-south-trending structural basin that is flanked by Mesozoic and Tertiary rocks of the Cascade Range on the east and by Eocene rocks of the Olympic Mountains on the west. Display Faults. This formation, up to 15km thick, is largely buried (from one to ten kilometers deep), and known mainly by magnetotellurics and other geophysical methods. (Their model of the Black Hills Uplift is analogous with their "wedge" model of the Seattle Uplift, discussed above, but in the opposite direction. (Enter only one word per blank.) This map of Puget Sound shows the location of the methane plumes (yellow and white circles) detected along the ship's path (purple). Earthquakes occur nearly every day in Washington. [83], The CCFZ appears to be related to the parallel Tokul Creek fault zone to the south; both appear to be conjugate faults[84] to the northwest-trending SWIF. [74], Early Eocene igneous units in the area appear to be part of a 49- to 44- Ma magmatic belt that appeared just after the arrival of Siletzia, and possibly associated with that event. The most striking concentrations of mid-crustal seismicity in western Washington outside of Puget Sound are the Saint Helens Zone (SHZ) and Western Rainier Zone (WRZ) at the southern edge of the Puget Lowland (see seismicity map, right). Marine technician Sony Brugger, right, retrieves underwater sampling equipment during a December 2020 research cruise aboard the RV Rachel Carson. [6] The first definite indications of most of these faults came from gravitational mapping in 1965,[7] and their likely existence noted on mapping in 1980 and 1985. The energy released depends on the length of the fault; the faults here are believed capable of generating earthquakes as great as M 6 or 7. [89] The northern end of the mountain falls off where it crosses the eastern end of the Seattle Fault, which in turn terminates at the RMFZ; Rattlesnake Mountain forms the eastern edge of the Seattle Uplift. The fault type is subducting. [140] Recent geophysical modeling suggests that the Dewatto lineament is the expression of a blind (concealed), low-angle, east-dipping thrust fault, named the Dewatto fault. [210] The zone between these two lines, reflecting changes in regional structure, seismicity, fault orientation, and possibly the underlying lithospheric structure, appears to be a major structural boundary in the Puget Lowland. 1 - 10 of 83 American Seattle Cruise Reviews. Nurse Recruiter at VA Puget Sound health care, 206-764-2487. It is not notably seismogenic. Observing these topographical features, some parallel gravity gradients, and a "very active zone of minor seismicity", William Rogers inferred in 1970 a "fault or other major structural feature".[64]. The Devils Mountain Fault separates two similar but distinctive ensembles of Mesozoic (pre-Tertiary, before the dinosaurs died) or older rock. This map is useful in showing the location and approximate length of faults but does not provide the impact an earthquake from a fault could have on the area surrounding. Puget Sound Tsunami Simulation - National Oceanic and Atmospheric - Read More Expert Puts Turkey, Syria Quake into Perspective | FOX 13 And the magnitude used to generate that wave is only about 7.5, as opposed to a magnitude-9 earthquake off the coast. Aeromagnetic anomaly maps (USGS OFR 99-514). Though the Olympia Structure (a suspected fault) runs towards the SHZ, and delineates the northern edge of an exposed section of the Crescent Formation, it appears to be an upper crustal fold, part of a pattern of folding that extends southeast to cross the Columbia River near The Dalles, and unrelated to the mid and lower crustal SHZ. Faults running on the Snohomish County-Skagit County line and between Port Townsend and Whidbey Island point toward Vancouver Island. The Bellingham BayChaplain fault zone was first mapped by Cheney in 1976 as running from near Chaplain Lake (north of Sultan) NNW past Bellingham Bay. Harold Tobin, . Since 2000 studies of LIDAR and high-resolution aeromagnetic data have identified scarps near Woodinville which trenching has confirmed to be tectonically derived and geologically recent. If, as this model suggests, the various faults are interconnected within the thrust sheet, there is a possibility that one earthquake could trigger others. There are some interesting relationships here. I've been in the business for 20 years and the way skilled labor has been treated up until very recently drove a ton of people away from the industry. [104] Although there is no direct evidence for any major north-striking faults under Seattle, this prospect appears to be endorsed by the geological community.[105]. Deep quakes are the most common large earthquakes that occur in the Puget Sound region. . A Coast Range Boundary Fault (CRBF, discussed above) was inferred on the basis of differences in the basement rock to the west and east of Puget Sound (the Crescent FormationCascadia core contact), and arbitrarily mapped at various locations including Lake Washington; north of the OWL this is now generally identified, with the Southern Whidbey Island Fault. Combined with continued aggressive electric conservation efforts, Energize . It may also be the original location of the DarringtonDevils Mountain Fault (the dashed line "X" at the top of the following map). Full-Time. $30 to $33 Hourly. [21] The OWL appears to be a deep-seated structure over which the shallower crust of the Puget Lowland is being pushed, but this remains speculative. The study was. [173] One reason for caution is that a detailed gravity survey was unable to resolve whether the Olympia structure is, or is not, a fault. It appears that the Seattle Uplift is acting as a rigid block, with the Tacoma, Dewatto, and Seattle faults being the southern, western, and northern faces. [197] This anticline, or uplifted fold, and the narrower width of the northern part of the SWCC, reflects an episode of compression of this formation. Devils Mountain Fault Zone, Northern Puget Sound, Washington Sail Date: October 2022 . [67] However, subsequent mapping shows that the Woods Creek Fault (WCF), a four-mile wide strip of oblique-slip and strike-slip faults just to the west and passing directly under Sultan, appears to be the more significant fault, and better aligned with Mount Vernon. [49] Yet it is also notable that "most seismicity in the northern Puget Sound occurs along and southwest of the southern Whidbey Island fault at typical depths of 1527 km within the lower part of the Crescent Formation. The length of the Doty Fault is problematical: the report in 2000 gave it as 65km (40 miles), but without comment or citation. 4 earthquakes in the past 30 days. Discovery of faults has been greatly facilitated with the development of LIDAR, a technique that can generally penetrate forest canopy and vegetation to image the actual ground surface with an unprecedented accuracy of approximately one foot (30cm). 48), along the edge of a formation known as the Southern Washington Cascades Conductor. [68] Both of these faults (and some others) appear to terminate against the left-lateral Sultan River Fault at the western margin of the NNE-striking Cherry Creek Fault Zone (CCFZ; see next section). The Straight Creek Fault is a major structure in the North Cascades, but has not been active for over 30 million years. 5) Select plot type. Mapping from the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network shows that the bulk of the earthquakes in western Washington are concentrated in four places: in two narrow zones under Mt. On the north is the HelenaHaystack mlange (HH mlange, purple in the diagram at right), on the south the Western and Eastern mlange belts (WEMB, blue). Document name Date Description Additional versions; 2809: 4/1/2021: . [115] This seems reasonable enough, as Hood Canal is a prominent physiographic boundary between the Olympic Mountains and Puget Lowlands, and believed to be the location of a major fault. [187] Such a length would be comparable to the length of the Seattle or Tacoma faults, and capable of an earthquake of M 6.7. [59] Another study identified an unusually broad band of scarps passing between Bothell and Snohomish, with several scarps in the vicinity of King County's controversial Brightwater regional sewage treatment plant showing at least four and possibly nine events on the SWIF in the last 16,400 years. [80], In the crowded field of active or potentially active fault zones that have been discovered in the lower Snoqualmie Valley, the Cherry Creek fault zone is particularly notable because east of Duvall[81] it passes through a hotspot of active seismicity, including the 1996 '"`UNIQ--templatestyles-00000057-QINU`"'ML 5.3 Duvall earthquake. [112] But if the Seattle Fault should break in conjunction with other faults (discussed above), considerably more energy would be released, on the order of ~M 8.