@Mister Greenthumb wrote:
@Lostby7 wrote:
http://www.fox6now.com/news/witi-100210-illinois-earthquake,0,2094995.story
It’s your FAULT for having that new EC published.
I don’t think it was MY FAULT, but I was kinda hoping someone would tie it to the Waukesha Fault (to make my EC listing a little more interesting). Turns out most earthquakes unless they are on the major known faults are never assigned to a particular “named” fault.
From the USGS:
Earthquakes everywhere occur on faults within bedrock, usually miles deep. Most of the region’s bedrock was formed as several generations of mountains rose and were eroded down again over the last billion or so years.
At well-studied plate boundaries like the San Andreas fault system in California, often scientists can determine the name of the specific fault that is responsible for an earthquake. In contrast, east of the Rocky Mountains this is rarely the case. All parts of this vast region are far from the nearest plate boundaries, which, for the U.S., are to the east in the center of the Atlantic Ocean, to the south in the Caribbean Sea, and to the west in California and offshore from Washington and Oregon. The region is laced with known faults but numerous smaller or deeply buried faults remain undetected. Even most of the known faults are poorly located at earthquake depths. Accordingly, few earthquakes east of the Rockies can be linked to named faults. It is difficult to determine if a known fault is still active and could slip and cause an earthquake. In most areas east of the Rockies, the best guide to earthquake hazards is the earthquakes themselves.
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