The Walton fault zone is a major
active
Active may refer to:
Music
* ''Active'' (album), a 1992 album by Casiopea
* Active Records, a record label
Ships
* ''Active'' (ship), several commercial ships by that name
* HMS ''Active'', the name of various ships of the British Royal ...
left lateral (sinistral)
strike-slip 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 tectonic ...
, forming part of the southern boundary to the
Cayman Trough
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The Cayman Trough (also known as the Cayman Trench, Bartlett Deep and Bartlett Trough) is a complex transform fault zone pull-apart basin which contains a small spreading ridge, the Mid-Cayman Rise, on the floor of the western Caribbea ...
. It extends from the
Mid-Cayman Rise
The Mid-Cayman Rise or Mid-Cayman Spreading Center is a relatively short (110 km long) divergent plate boundary in the middle of the Cayman Trough. It forms part of a dominantly transform boundary that is part of the southern margin to the ...
spreading center
A mid-ocean ridge (MOR) is a seafloor mountain system formed by plate tectonics. It typically has a depth of about and rises about above the deepest portion of an ocean basin. This feature is where seafloor spreading takes place along a diverge ...
in the west to
Jamaica
Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...
in the east. It has a total length of about 360 km and is formed of several sub-parallel strands. Together with the
Enriquillo-Plantain Garden fault zone it forms the southern boundary of the
Gonâve Microplate Gonave may refer to:
*Gulf of Gonâve
*Gonâve Island
* Gonâve Microplate See also
*Gonaïves
Gonaïves (; ht, Gonayiv, ) is a List of communes of Haiti, commune in northern Haiti, and the capital of the Artibonite (department), Artibonite Depa ...
.
It is associated with only moderate
earthquake
An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...
s with magnitudes of less than 6.
References
{{Reflist
Strike-slip faults
Geology of the Caribbean