 This is an aerial photo of the San Andreas fault line in California. The red arrows point to the crack in the crust that is the surface fault. This fault is the boundary between two huge plates, the North American plate and the Pacific plate. The two plates are sliding past each other in opposite directions. This type of plate boundary is called a transverse boundary. A transverse boundary is actually a tear in the Earth's crust. The black arrows represent the directions that the two plates are traveling.
This fault line is perhaps the most studied transverse boundary in the world. Many earthquakes each year occur on the San Andreas fault which runs in California from the Mexico border east of San Diego north to the San Francisco Bay area. The next card shows the destruction that occurred during the 1971 San Fernando earthquake.
Click on "Next" to see the destruction that an earthquake can produce!
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