(Geology) Tsunami Threat in California - Essay Example

In the history of Tsunami, the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami was one of the deadliest disasters that killed over 230,000 people in 14 countries near the Indian Ocean. Although researchers have identified the causes and other characteristics of this natural disaster, many facts about Tsunami still remain undiscovered. This paper will discuss the “Tsunami threat in California” in detail. Geological surveys have identified that most of the faults in the United States, specifically in California, are strike slip faults.

In addition, the presence of dip slip faults also has been discovered in California (State of California, 1992). In geology, a fault indicates a discontinuity in a large volume of rock and this discontinuity or planar fracture often causes notable displacements during the times of an earth movement. Strike slip faults can be simply defined as a motion which is parallel to the strike of the fault and sometimes it is referred to as side by side motion. Strike slip faults characterized with left lateral motion are called sinistral faults while those resemble a right lateral motion fall under the category of dextral faults.

In contrast, dip slip faults represent fractures where the blocks are shifted almost vertically. In the case of dip slip faults, a downward motion is termed as normal and an upward motion is known as reverse. A fault that includes the components of both strike slip and dip slip is commonly referred to as an oblique slip fault. It has been identified that both the strike slip faults and dip slip faults may lead to earthquakes and thereby tsunamis. Earthquakes associated with strike slip faults and reverse slip faults can have the potential to cause powerful tsunamis because most of such earthquakes generally hit with a magnitude of 8 or more and it has been observed that energy released during an earthquake is proportional to the