The Ulakhan Fault is a left-lateral moving

transform fault A transform fault or transform boundary, is a fault along a plate boundary where the motion is predominantly horizontal. It ends abruptly where it connects to another plate boundary, either another transform, a spreading ridge, or a subduct ...

that runs along the boundary between two

tectonic Tectonics (; ) are the processes that control the structure and properties of the Earth's crust and its evolution through time. These include the processes of mountain building, the growth and behavior of the strong, old cores of continents ...

plates in northeast

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

, the

North American Plate The North American Plate is a tectonic plate covering most of North America, Cuba, the Bahamas, extreme northeastern Asia, and parts of Iceland and the Azores. With an area of , it is the Earth's second largest tectonic plate, behind the Paci ...

, and the

Okhotsk Plate The Okhotsk Plate is a minor tectonic plate covering the Kamchatka Peninsula, Magadan Oblast, and Sakhalin Island of Russia; Hokkaido, Kantō and Tōhoku regions of Japan; the Sea of Okhotsk, as well as the disputed Kuril Islands. It was ...

. It runs from a

triple junction A triple junction is the point where the boundaries of three tectonic plates meet. At the triple junction each of the three boundaries will be one of three types – a ridge (R), trench (T) or transform fault (F) – and triple junctions can b ...

in the

Chersky Range The Chersky Range (, ) is a chain of mountains in northeastern Siberia between the Yana River and the Indigirka River. Administratively the area of the range belongs to the Sakha Republic, although a small section in the east is within Magada ...

in the west, to another triple junction with the Aleutian Trench and the

Kuril Trench The Kuril Islands or Kurile Islands (; rus, Кури́льские острова́, r=Kuril'skiye ostrova, p=kʊˈrʲilʲskʲɪjə ɐstrɐˈva; Japanese: or ) are a volcanic archipelago currently administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast in the ...

in the east. From the offset of dated geomorphological features, a slip rate of 5.3±1.3 mm per year has been measured, consistent with estimates from GPS constrained global plate models. The analysis of fault scarps along the fault zone in the Seymchan Basin suggests that the fault is characterised by occasional large (>7.5) earthquakes.

References

External links

International Seismic-Volcanic Workshop on Kamchatkan-Aleutian Subduction Processes (KASP), Fourth Workshop, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky August 21-27, 2004
Plate tectonics Seismic faults of Asia Geology of the Russian Far East Seismic faults of North America {{tectonics-stub