The Whittier Fault is a
geologic fault
In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectoni ...
located in eastern
Los Angeles County
Los Angeles County, officially the County of Los Angeles, and sometimes abbreviated as L.A. County, is the most populous county in the United States and in the U.S. state of California, with 9,861,224 residents estimated as of 2022. It is th ...
in
Southern California
Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. It includes the Los Angeles metropolitan area, the second most populous urban ...
, that is one of the two upper branches of the
Elsinore Fault Zone
The Elsinore Fault Zone is a large right-lateral strike-slip geological fault structure in Southern California. The fault is part of the trilateral split of the San Andreas fault system and is one of the largest, though quietest faults in Southe ...
, with the
Chino Fault the second.
Geology
The Whittier Fault is a right-lateral strike-slip
fault that runs along the
Chino Hills range between the cities of
Chino Hills
The Chino Hills are a mountain range on the border of Orange, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino counties, California, with a small portion in Riverside County. The Chino Hills State Park preserves open space and habitat in them.
Geography
The C ...
and
Whittier. The fault has a slip rate of per year. It is estimated that this fault could generate a quake of 6.0–7.2 on the
moment magnitude scale
The moment magnitude scale (MMS; denoted explicitly with or Mw, and generally implied with use of a single M for magnitude) is a measure of an earthquake's magnitude ("size" or strength) based on its seismic moment. It was defined in a 1979 pap ...
.
See also
*
Puente Hills Fault
The Puente Hills Fault (also known as the Puente Hills Thrust Fault System) is an active geological fault that is located in the Los Angeles Basin in California. The thrust fault was discovered in 1999 and runs about in three discrete sections ...
*
San Andreas Fault
The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly through California. It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is right-lateral strike-slip (horizontal) ...
References
*
Seismic faults of California
Strike-slip faults
Geology of Los Angeles County, California
Geology of Orange County, California
Geology of Riverside County, California
Geography of the San Gabriel Valley
Chino Hills (California)
Whittier, California
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