The Puget Sound region may have experienced a single giant earthquake, or two in quick succession, in the year 923 or 924.
DepositphotosEarthquakes occur along fractures, or faults, in the earth’s crust. When one of these cracks in the ground suddenly moves, it can cause a quake. And sometimes a quake at one fault can trigger activity at another, creating one large earthquake—or multiple in quick succession.
Researchers have linked two faults in the Seattle area, and they’ve discovered this geologic duo was responsible for an earth-shifting event more than a millennium ago. In a new study published in the journal, researchers analyzed old tree samples from Washington’s Puget Sound region. This paper is one of the few to link the Seattle fault with the Saddle Mountain fault, and the authors say that current hazard models need to be updated to include this data.
Quakes can set off landslides that uproot trees or tsunamis that drown them. “If those trees are preserved, you can go back and work with them and find out exactly when they died and thus when the earthquake occurred,” says lead study author Bryan Black, a dendrochronologist at the University of Arizona.
Radiocarbon dating showed these dead trees were more than 1,100 years old. Using dendrochronology, the science of analyzing tree rings, the team confirmed that between 923 and 924 CE two faults in the Seattle area produced either one large earthquake of magnitude 7.8, or two sequential earthquakes of slightly lower magnitude. By deciphering the tree rings, Black managed to determine that trees killed near the Seattle fault died around the same time as trees killed near the Saddle Mountain fault.
While this paper’s discoveries may feel like bad news, it’s really a reminder that earthquakes pose a perennial hazard along the West Coast, Page says. Lots of urban centers are clustered around faults that are only likely to produce earthquakes of small or moderate magnitude. But because of the presence of buildings and people, those can be more devastating than larger earthquakes in remote areas, she says.
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