Vancouver Earthquake and Plate Tectonics
Apparently Vancouver is going to be hit by a “big one”. At school, before I went to university I studied Geography at school as well as Geology so I know a little bit about plate tectonics and how and why earthquakes and mass movement ocurr.
The Juan de Fuca plate is being forced under the North American plate creating a “subduction zone”. This subduction has formed a lot of magnificent mountain areas in the Cascade Volcanic Belt (where volcanic mountains have formed that are not all within the Cascade Range). The movement of one plate beneath each other is never a smooth process and they tend to lock up until it reaches a point where there is so much pressure and stress that it violently moves. It is this mass movement that causes an earthquake.
I can see Mount Baker from my window but there are many other mountains that you may have heard about in and around Vancouver, BC such as:
- Mount Silverthrone
- Devastator Peak
- Mount Fee
- Black Tusk
- Cinder Cone
- Opal Cone
- Mount Garibaldi
- Watts Point
Baker incidentally still shows steam/fume activity from it’s crate but is considered dormant, but wait, didn’t they say that about Mount St. Helens which erupted famously in 1980?
I don’t think we’re going to die but if we were living on Vancouver Island I would be worried, as Vancouver Island is a direct formation resulting from plate tectonic activity. Stop worrying Alyssa! Good reads for this include Global Tectonics and Earth as an Evolving Planetary System. (I believe the latter was on my course reading list at school).
