Trench wall on the San Andreas
Fault
Carol Prentice (USGS) and Tom Anderson (Sonoma
State University) studying a trench wall on the San Andreas Fault
in Ft. Ross, CA. By exhuming the top
few meters of an active fault, paleoseismologists can locate evidence
of
past earthquakes in disturbed, ancient soil layers. Scientists
then
estimate the dates of these past quakes by using radiocarbon and
other
dating techniques, providing a basis for estimating the probability
of
future earthquakes.
This photo was taken using a technique called kite aerial photography
(KAP),
an inexpensive approach to acquiring aerial images by suspending
a camera
from a large kite.
See also a Virtual Tour of the San Andreas at the Carrizo Plain
using KAP (http://quake.usgs.gov/kap/).
Contributed by Scott Haefner, USGS Menlo Park |
