San Andreas Quake Lull Possibly Caused by Flood Control - Yahoo! News
The San Andreas Fault is overdue for "the big one," and the efforts by humans to control flooding in the area could be the reason for the recent lull in temblors, a new study suggests.
Ancient floods once helped unleash earthquakes on the San Andreas, a group of researchers has found. The southern portion of the fault has not experienced a large earthquake for about 300 years, though, which makes one long overdue — the previous five major earthquakes in the region occurred at approximately 180-year intervals.
Over the past century, humans have put in place measures to control floods in the region to protect property and infrastructure, which the researchers say might explain the quake lull.
Flooding possibly fueled faults
To investigate both the cause of these earthquakes and the current lull in them, scientists probed the locale where the southern San Andreas Fault ends, the Salton Sea, currently the largest lake in California. [...]
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