The San Andreas Fault Line runs right down the middle of Tomales Bay, a beautiful place to kayak just North of San Francisco. This is the southern tip of the Bay.
The Inverness peninsula is the cleft of land on the left.
I had to take a closer look. The horizontal brown line is a dirt path. The fault line runs under the water from the bottom left of the photo to the top right. The hills on the left are on a different plate than then land I was standing on. As for the water, over the past decades, with farming and logging, the runoff from the streams behind me have dramatically increased the sedimentary buildup. In other words, the low lands you see here are fairly recent side-effects of human activity.
If I ever find myself here, I must be sure to be on one tectonic plate or another! I should never want to be in the middle! I will remember this photo to use as a guide. Hummmm.
About runoff, see what I have to say in my comment here. Humans in general are so unware of the dammage we do to the earth’s surface.
Oh, I wouldn’t worry an earthquake no matter where you are in this area, Mimosa, when the big one hits here, you’ll be on the ground rather quickly and enjoying the ride.
And the runoff sediment is interesting.. I wonder how fertile the soil is down there, could it just be dredged and hauled back up to the field to grow things on it again? I’m not sure we’re unaware of the damage, I think it’s more like indifferent. Give people two choices, hard but non-damaging and easy, and most people chose easy every time.
I’d say both of these are examples of the downsides of a culture that emphasizes production. The American cultural undertone is:
Are you getting enough done? No you are not. Ignore some details and get more done! Stop doing X and Y… They don’t contribute to production, how important can they be?
X and Y could be exersizing, optimizing energy usage, environmental friendlyness, spending time with family/friends; many other things that aren’t directly related to production of something saleable. The very prevalent arguments that X protection isn’t business friendly bears out that cutting corners is quite popular amongst some. Sometimes it turns out that the money/time in those cut corners cause unanticipated ripple effects that cause us to stop cutting particular corners, but often times, in the name of productivity, we continue to do as little as possible to produce something that people will buy. Of course it’s tough to find the right balance; If you make every single improvement you can think of or do everything that comes to mind, nothing ever gets done, or everything costs too much.
BenODen
It is very unlikely that I will ever find myself in this area (California) so I will likely not get a chance to have this wild ride down the earth’s newly formed crack, should that happen, or should I say, when that will happen. However, in Québec, we are in some danger too, even if not as great or obvious. We tend to forget the risk here until we occasionally hear about or experience some tremors. There is a fault line all along the St-Lawrence river so that whole region as well as the Montréal area and the mountainous areas north and south of this city are all very vulnerable to earth quakes. I am across the river right in front of Montréal.
Historical map of earthquakes in Canada.
About the earth’s precariousnous in the hands of humans, I agree that too many are just indifferent. We too often have the attitude that the earth is to be used as if it is borrowed or rented. We forget that it is ours or at least that humanity is its caretaker with a huge responsibility. Lets us say that we have something like a 99 year lease (Long Lease 99 in English; emphytéose or bail emphytéotique in French) but the period is much longer! We must not neglect the protection, preservation and upkeep of our planet.
Leave a Reply to BenODen Cancel reply