The surface expression of the San Andreas transform fault zone is a right-lateral strike-slip fault. The fault zone is approximately 1300 km long and is made up of three major segments, each with characteristic types, magnitudes and frequencies of earthquake.
They mostly occur within 1-2 fault lengths of the mainshock. For the largest earthquakes, this is a long distance; it is thought that the 1906 San Francisco earthquake triggered events in southern California, western Nevada, southern central Oregon, and western Arizona, all within 2 days of the mainshock. An earthquake is the ground shaking caused by a sudden slip on a fault. Stresses in the earth's outer layer push the sides of the fault together. Stress builds up and the rocks slip suddenly, releasing energy in waves that travel through the earth's crust and cause the shaking that we feel during an earthquake. The San Andreas Fault is the sliding boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. It slices California in two from Cape Mendocino to the Mexican border. San Diego, Los Angeles and Big Sur are on the Pacific Plate. San Francisco, Sacramento and the Sierra Nevada are on the North American Plate. San Andreas Map: The red line on this map follows the surface trace of the San Andreas Fault across California. Areas to the east (right) of the fault are on the North American tectonic plate. Areas to the west (left) of the fault are part of the Pacific The magnitude of an earthquake is related to the area of the fault on which it occurs-the larger the fault area, the larger the earthquake. The San Andreas Fault is 800 miles long and only about 10-12 miles deep, so that earthquakes larger than magnitude 8.3 are extremely unlikely. An earthquake is the ground shaking caused by a sudden slip on a fault. Stresses in the earth's outer layer push the sides of the fault together. Stress builds up and the rocks slip suddenly, releasing energy in waves that travel through the earth's crust and cause the shaking that we feel during an Map of the San Andreas Fault, showing relative motion. The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly 1300 km (810 miles) through California. It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is right-lateral strike-slip (horizontal). It is named after San Andreas Lake, a small body of water that was formed in a valley between the two plates. Following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Lawson concluded that the fault extended all the way into southern Fault line redirects here. For other uses, see Fault line (disambiguation) . In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock, across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock mass movement. Large faults within the Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic forces, with the largest forming the boundaries between the plates, such as subduction zones or transform faults. Energy release associated with rapid movement on active faults is the cause of most earthquakes. A fault plane is the plane that represents the fracture surface of a fault. A fault trace or fault line is the intersection of a fault plane with the ground surface Characteristics of the San Andreas Fault Zone. The surface expression of the San Andreas transform fault zone is a right-lateral strike-slip fault. The fault zone is approximately 1300 km long and is made up of three major segments, each with characteristic types, magnitudes and frequencies of earthquake activity. The relative rate of motion between the North American plate and the Pacific plate is approximately 3.5 to 4.6 cm per year, most of which (2.0 to 3.5 cm per year) is accounted for by horizontal displacement along the San Andreas fault zone. 100). Faults can be as short as a few metres and as long as 1000km. The fault rupture from an earthquake isn’t always a straight or continuous line. Sometimes there can be short offsets between parts of the fault, and even major faults can have large bends in them.  As you can see by examining a fault map of southern California or a satellite image showing superimposed fault lines, southern California is traversed by numerous faults. Some of these, like the San Andreas Fault, are master players in the southern California fault mosaic; others are minor and not so well known. A fault is a fracture or zone of fractures [in the earth's crust] along which there has been [movement] of the sides relative to one another (modified from the Glossary of Geology, Bates and Jackson, 1987, p. 223). satellite image of southern California showing superposed fault lines (image sources: (1) faults from Jennings, 1994; (2) Landsat image from Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology). A fault is a fracture or zone of fractures [in the earth's crust] along which there has been [movement] of the sides relative to one another (modified from the Glossary of Geology, Bates and Jackson, 1987, p. 223).
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/megaqk_facts_fantasy.php http://geology.com/articles/san-andreas-fault.shtml http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/megaqk_facts_fantasy.php https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Andreas_Fault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault_(geology) http://academic.emporia.edu/aberjame/student/nester1/sandreas.htm http://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/Learning/Science-Topics/Earthquakes/Earthquakes-and-Faults/Different-types-of-Faults http://geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/archive/socal/geology/inland_empire/socal_faults.html http://geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/archive/socal/geology/inland_empire/socal_faults.html
characteristics of the earthquake fault lines