The Cerro Prieto Fault is a

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 ...

located in far northern

Baja California Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...

. It runs between the

Cerro Prieto Cerro Prieto ( coc, Wee Ñaay, eng, "Black Hill") is a volcano located approximately 29 km (18 mi) SSE of Mexicali in the Mexican state of Baja California. The volcano lies astride a spreading center associated with the East Pacific R ...

spreading center located southwest of

Mexicali Mexicali (; ) is the capital city of the Mexican state of Baja California. The city, seat of the Mexicali Municipality, has a population of 689,775, according to the 2010 census, while the Calexico–Mexicali metropolitan area is home to 1,000,0 ...

, and the

Wagner Basin Wagner Basin is a submarine depression in the far northern part of the Gulf of California. The basin is currently tectonically active. It is the northernmost underwater depression associated with the East Pacific Rise and is located near the southe ...

, another spreading center which lies under the

Gulf of California The Gulf of California ( es, Golfo de California), also known as the Sea of Cortés (''Mar de Cortés'') or Sea of Cortez, or less commonly as the Vermilion Sea (''Mar Bermejo''), is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean that separates the Baja C ...

. These spreading centers are part of the

East Pacific Rise The East Pacific Rise is a mid-ocean rise (termed an oceanic rise and not a mid-ocean ridge due to its higher rate of spreading that results in less elevation increase and more regular terrain), a divergent tectonic plate boundary located alon ...

, the northern leg of which has formed the Gulf of California by steadily rifting the Baja California Peninsula away from the mainland of

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

. Seismic studies indicate a linear trend of

hypocenter In seismology, a hypocenter or hypocentre () is the point of origin of an earthquake or a subsurface nuclear explosion. A synonym is the focus of an earthquake. Earthquakes An earthquake's hypocenter is the position where the strain energy ...

s to the northwest of Cerro Prieto which is interpreted as a continuation of the Cerro Prieto Fault some 45 km to the northwest across the international border about 7 km into southern California.Magistrale, Harold, ''The relation of the southern San Jacinto fault zone to the Imperial and Cerro Prieto faults'' in Contributions to Crustal Evolution of the Southwestern United States, GSA Special Paper 365, 2002, pp. 271-278

References

Geology of Mexico Depressions of Mexico Salton Trough {{tectonics-stub