1954 Rainbow Mountain-Fairview Peak-Dixie Valley Earthquakes
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1954 Rainbow Mountain-Fairview Peak-Dixie Valley Earthquakes
In 1954, the state of Nevada was struck by a series of earthquakes that began with three magnitude 6.0+ events in July and August that preceded the 7.1–7.3 mainshock and M 6.9 aftershock, both on December 12. All five earthquakes are among the largest in the state, and the largest since the Cedar Mountain earthquake (M 7.2) of 1932 and Pleasant Valley event ( 7.7) in 1915. The earthquake was felt throughout much of the western United States. Geology The state of Nevada sits within a geologic province known as the Basin and Range. The Basin and Range Province is bounded by the Colorado Plateau, Wasatch Fault, Rio Grande Rift and Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt. This region in the North American continent is rifting apart in a northwest–southeast direction. Extension of the crust has resulted in a basin and range topography, dominated by dip-slip (normal) faults accommodating extension. Fault block tilting has created many mountain ranges no more than 16 km wide and 13 ...
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Fault (geology)
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 tectonic forces, with the largest forming the boundaries between the plates, such as the megathrust faults of subduction zones or transform faults. Energy release associated with rapid movement on active faults is the cause of most earthquakes. Faults may also displace slowly, by aseismic creep. A ''fault plane'' is the plane that represents the fracture surface of a fault. A ''fault trace'' or ''fault line'' is a place where the fault can be seen or mapped on the surface. A fault trace is also the line commonly plotted on geologic maps to represent a fault. A ''fault zone'' is a cluster of parallel faults. However, the term is also used for the zone of crushed rock along a single fault. Prolonged motion along closely spaced faults can blur the ...
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Sierra Nevada–Great Valley Block
The Sierra Nevada–Great Valley Block (SNGV) is a section of the earth's crust in California encompassing most of the region east of the Great Valley fault system which runs along the eastern foot of the Coast Ranges, and west of the Sierra Nevada Fault which runs along the foot of the Sierra Nevada's eastern scarp. To the south, the block is bounded by the Garlock Fault. The northern bound is not well defined at present, but generally runs along a line extending across the northern Sacramento Valley. The SNGV has been found to behave like a rigid body relative to the North American Plate to which it is somewhat loosely attached, for this reason it is sometimes referred to as Sierra Nevada microplate. The block moves in a northwest direction at approximately 12 mm per year while the rest of the North American Plate is moving in a southwest direction. In far northern California, this produces a zone of convergence which has resulted in the compressive uplift of the Coast Ranges. ...
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Rake (geology)
In structural geology, rake (or pitch) is formally defined as "the angle between a line r a featureand the strike line of the plane in which it is found", measured on the plane. The three-dimensional orientation of a line can be described with just a plunge and trend. The rake is a useful description of a line because often (in geology) features (lines) follow along a planar surface. In these cases the rake can be used to describe the line's orientation in three dimensions relative to that planar surface. One might also expect to see this used when the particular line is hard to measure directly (possibly due to outcrops impeding measurement). The rake always sweeps down from the horizontal plane. Fault motion Rake is used to describe the direction of fault motion with respect to the strike (measured anticlockwise from the horizontal, up is positive; values between −180° and 180°): * left-lateral strike slip: rake near 0° * right-lateral strike slip: rake near 180 ...
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Fairview Peak (Churchill County, Nevada)
Fairview Peak is a summit in the Clan Alpine Mountains of the U.S. state of Nevada. The elevation is . Fairview Peak was so named on account of the scenic views it affords. Variant names were "Fairview Cairn" and "Fairview Mountain". The ghost town of Fairview, Nevada takes its name from the nearby peak. 1954 earthquakes A very large earthquake doublet occurred on December 16, 1954. The Dixie Valley/Fairview earthquakes occurred four minutes apart, each with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (''Extreme''). The initial shock measured 7.3 and the second shock measured 6.9 . Damage to man-made structures was minimal because the region was sparsely populated at the time, but oblique-slip 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 tectonic ... motion on a normal fault resulted in the ...
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Pacific Time Zone
The Pacific Time Zone (PT) is a time zone encompassing parts of western Canada, the western United States, and western Mexico. Places in this zone observe standard time by subtracting eight hours from Coordinated Universal Time ( UTC−08:00). During daylight saving time, a time offset of UTC−07:00 is used. In the United States and Canada, this time zone is generically called the Pacific Time Zone. Specifically, time in this zone is referred to as Pacific Standard Time (PST) when standard time is being observed (early November to mid-March), and Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) when daylight saving time (mid-March to early November) is being observed. In Mexico, the corresponding time zone is known as the ''Zona Noroeste'' (Northwest Zone) and observes the same daylight saving schedule as the U.S. and Canada. The largest city in the Pacific Time Zone is Los Angeles, whose metropolitan area is also the largest in the time zone. The zone is two hours ahead of the Hawaii–Aleut ...
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Fault Scarp Near Fairview Peak, Nevada Resulting From The December 16, 1954 Earthquake
Fault commonly refers to: *Fault (geology), planar rock fractures showing evidence of relative movement *Fault (law), blameworthiness or responsibility Fault(s) may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * "Fault", a song by Taproot from ''Welcome'' * ''Faults'' (film), 2014 Science and technology *Fault (computing), also called a ''trap'' or an ''exception'', a type of interrupt in software or operating systems *Fault (technology), an abnormal condition or defect that may lead to a failure *Electrical fault, an abnormal current Sport and competition *Fault (breeding), an undesirable aspect of structure or appearance of an animal *Fault, in pickleball, any infringement of the rules by a player *Fault, in show jumping, a penalty *Fault, in tennis jargon, a serve that fails to place a tennis ball in the correct area of play See also *Blame *Defect (other) *Error *Mistake (other) *Software bug A software bug is an error, flaw or fault in the des ...
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Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge
Stillwater National Wildlife Refuge is a National Wildlife Refuge of the United States in Nevada. It is located in the Lahontan Valley, near the community of Fallon, sixty miles east of Reno. It was established in 1949 and encompasses . The Stillwater wetlands are well known to birders, as this area has been designated a site of international importance by the Western Hemispheric Shorebird Reserve Network because of the hundreds of thousands of shorebirds, such as long-billed dowitcher, black-necked stilt, and American avocet passing through during migration. Also listed as a 'Globally Important Bird Area' by the American Bird Conservancy, more than 280 species have been sighted in the area. These tremendously rich and diverse wetlands attract more than a quarter million waterfowl, as well as over 20,000 other water birds, including American white pelicans, double-crested cormorants, white-faced ibis, and several species of egrets, herons, gulls, and tern Terns are sea ...
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Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale
The Modified Mercalli intensity scale (MM, MMI, or MCS), developed from Giuseppe Mercalli's Mercalli intensity scale of 1902, is a seismic intensity scale used for measuring the intensity of shaking produced by an earthquake. It measures the effects of an earthquake at a given location, distinguished from the earthquake's inherent force or strength as measured by seismic magnitude scales (such as the "" magnitude usually reported for an earthquake). While shaking is caused by the seismic energy released by an earthquake, earthquakes differ in how much of their energy is radiated as seismic waves. Deeper earthquakes also have less interaction with the surface, and their energy is spread out across a larger volume. Shaking intensity is localized, generally diminishing with distance from the earthquake's epicenter, but can be amplified in sedimentary basins and certain kinds of unconsolidated soils. Intensity scales empirically categorize the intensity of shaking based on the effect ...
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Salt Wells, Nevada
Salt Wells, Nevada is the site of a former brothel and a possible future route of Interstate 11. Salt Wells is located on the northern edge of the Salt Wells Marsh, 15 miles southeast of Fallon, Nevada on U.S. Route 50 near Sand Mountain. History Borax was discovered by William Throop at Salt Wells. In 1870, the American Borax Co. built a borax works there. In 1871, the plant was in operation, along with a smaller plant, producing 20 tons per month, though production ceased in a few years due to the low grade of the deposit. The borax deposit consisted of about 400 acres with a borax content of 10%, sometimes reaching 30%. In the 1920s and 30s, Salt Wells had a bar and a gas station. Salt Wells was the site of Salt Wells Villa, a brothel in operation from 1975. In 1977, the brothel was Firebombed by the wife of the Churchill County Sheriff, Mildred Banovich. The brothel closed in 2004. In 2007, the brothel was destroyed in a fire. In 2009, the Salt Wells Geothermal ...
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List Of Earthquakes In California
The earliest known California earthquake was documented in 1769 by the Spanish explorers and Catholic missionaries of the Portolá expedition as they traveled northward from San Diego along the Santa Ana River near the present site of Los Angeles. Ship captains and other explorers also documented earthquakes. As Spanish missions in California, Spanish missions were constructed beginning in the late 18th century, earthquakes records were kept. After the missions were Secularization, secularized in 1834, records were sparse until the California Gold Rush in the 1840s. From 1850–2004, there was about one potentially damaging event per year on average, though many of these did not cause serious consequences or loss of life. Since the three damaging earthquakes that occurred in the Midwestern United States, American Midwest and the East Coast of the United States, East Coast (1755 Cape Ann earthquake, 1755 Cape Ann, 1811–1812 New Madrid earthquakes, 1811–12 New Madrid, 1886 Char ...
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List Of Earthquakes In Alaska
This is an incomplete list of earthquakes in Alaska. See also *Geology of Alaska References {{Authority control Earthquakes Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...
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Walker Lane
The Walker Lane is a geologic trough roughly aligned with the California/Nevada border southward to where Death Valley intersects the Garlock Fault, a major left lateral, or sinistral, strike-slip fault. The north-northwest end of the Walker Lane is between Pyramid Lake in Nevada and California's Lassen Peak where the Honey Lake Fault Zone, the Warm Springs Valley Fault, and the Pyramid Lake Fault Zone meet the transverse tectonic zone forming the southern boundary of the Modoc Plateau and Columbia Plateau provinces. The Walker Lane takes up 15 to 25 percent of the boundary motion between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, the other 75 percent being taken up by the San Andreas Fault system to the west. The Walker Lane may represent an incipient major transform fault zone which could replace the San Andreas as the plate boundary in the future. The Walker Lane deformation belt also accommodates nearly 12 mm/yr of dextral shear between the Sierra Nevada– ...
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