Today’s assignment was to find out about a geographical feature located near your home town. I was born and raised in Santa Cruz, California so I went with the San Andreas Fault. Even though the fault doesn’t run directly through Santa Cruz I would definitely consider it close enough to be of importance. My parents both still remember the massive earthquake it caused in 1989, which toppled many buildings in downtown Santa Cruz and wreaked havoc in San Francisco.

Downtown Santa Cruz after the 1989 earthquake

The San Andreas Fault is about 30 million years at its oldest sections and run 810 miles vertically through the state of California. A Berkeley professor named Andrew Lawson first discovered the fault in 1895, naming it after a small lake formed by the fault. This convergence is where the Pacific Plate meets the huge North American Plate. So why is this related to life on Earth? For one plate tectonics obviously created the continents we live on today, but it also created the first land masses that life moved out of the sea onto. A huge step in evolution. One of the most important rolls that plate tectonics plays though is in the carbon cycle with the recycling and creation of new rock. Plate tectonics allows for carbon dioxide to be taken from the atmosphere (after being trapped by bacteria in the soil or in the ocean) and then stored in newly formed rock. This is an important step that would throw off our planet’s climate regulation if missing. On a more local level the Fault is responsible for creating the Santa Cruz Mountain rage that surround my home town.

A map of the San Andreas Fault and it’s movement

Sources:

http://nationalatlas.gov/articles/geology/features/sanandreas.html

http://www.yuprocks.com/earthquake_pictures/loma_prieta_earthquake_017.jpg

http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1990/1515/