A study from the University of Toronto Mississauga reveals new clues about an earthquake that rocked Argentina’s San Juan province in the 1950s.
A study from the University of Toronto Mississauga reveals new clues about an earthquake that rocked Argentina’s San Juan province in the 1950s. The results add important data about one of the Earth’s most active thrust zones and could help to protect cities in the region from earthquake damage in the future.
Jeremy Rimando, the lead author of the study and a PhD candidate in the lab of study co-author Lindsay Schoenbohm, an associate professor in the department of chemical and physical sciences. Their study, published in the journal Tectonics, focuses on the La Rinconada Fault in the western central area of Argentina.
“This region is seismically active and is bound by many thrust faults where one block of land moves over top of another,” says Rimando, who has conducted field research at several sites in the area. “It’s an area that experiences frequent earthquakes.”
The 30-kilometre-long La Rinconada Fault line marks a tectonic transition zone where the thin-skinned crust of the Eastern Precordillera meets the thick-skinned crust of Sierras Pampeanas in the Andes mountain range.The area is arid and rocky, with steep gravel-strewn hills and terraces that reveal the displacement of the Earth’s surface as the land shifts and slips along the fault line.
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Image via Cesar Distante.
