Anyone who has been to California knows how gorgeous it is -- from the the Sierras and Yosemite to Lake Tahoe to the Mojave Desert, the shimmering San Francisco Bay and the majestic bluffs of Big Sur and the Pacific coast, there's no lack of photo ops in this states.
But peel back the layers a bit, and you find a whole new level of beauty -- its geology. As part of its 150th anniversary celebration, the California Geological Survey has just released updated geological and fault maps for the whole state, one of the most jumbled and geologically complex in the country.
Above, the image represents all known major faults in the state (northernmost part is cut off): red lines are faults that have moved some time in the last 200 years (that is, there is a historical record of them moving). Orange depicts movement in the last 12,000 years, green in the last 700,000, and purple indicates some fault activity in the last couple of million years.
What a great way to illustrate how tectonics forces shape and tug at California every day. There's also a full, searchable Google Maps layer of the bedrock geology of the state. Ain't it pretty?:
Of course, most people living in California realize there is some risk of earthquakes almost everywhere in the state. But for anyone who wants to check out whether they're living near a recently active fault, they only need to pick out where they live in Google Maps and zoom in.
Big historical quakes are even marked along faults (click to see full size image):
Tags: Earthquakes, Everyday Science, Geology
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