Southern San Andreas Fault - Whitewater to Bombay Beach, Salton Trough, California

The San Andreas fault is the master fault that forms the margin between North American and Pacific Plates. Stretching over 210 kilometers from the Cajon Pass to Bombay Beach, the southern San Andreas fault represents the northeast boundary of the Salton Trough which originated in Miocene time as a half graben within a region of crustal extension. The trough is now filled with up to 20,000 feet of late Tertiary and Quaternary age sediments.

The field trip will provide the latest results of paleoseismic trenching along the Indio segment of the fault, the most poorly understood of all major San Andreas fault segments with regard to timing of past large magnitude earthquakes, slip rate, and therefore earthquake potential.