San Andreas fault reaches highest stress level in 1,000 years : Maui Now
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Maui News San Andreas fault reaches highest stress level in 1,000 years<br>June 15, 2026, 8:00 AM HST<br>-->
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Recent research led by University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa scientists found tectonic stress along the San Andreas and San Jacinto fault systems in Southern California has reached — in some places exceeded — the highest levels seen in the past 1,000 years.
Aerial view of the San Andreas Fault. (Courtesy Photo: Ian Kluft via Unsplash)
The study, recently published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth , has direct implications for seismic hazard assessments in one of the most densely populated and infrastructure-critical corridors in the United States.
“Our results show that stress levels on multiple fault segments are now at or above the highest values seen in the past millennium and that the region may be capable of a large through-going rupture involving both fault systems,” said lead author Liliane Burkhard in a press release.
Burkhard is a research affiliate at Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology in University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology .
She is also a scientist at the University of Bern, Switzerland.
“We also found that Cajon Pass may act as an ‘earthquake gate’: sometimes blocking large ruptures from crossing between the faults, and sometimes allowing them to pass through and involve both systems in a single event,” Burkhard said.
The researchers built a physics-based computer model that simulates how stress builds up and releases along the southern San Andreas and San Jacinto fault systems, including at Cajon Pass, which is a critical junction between the two fault systems.
They fed the model a 1,000-year record of earthquake history of the region reconstructed from geological evidence, such as radiocarbon dating of displaced sediments and tree-ring records.
By running this simulation forward to the present day, they estimated how much stress has built up.
“The conditions that determine whether the ‘earthquake gate’ at Cajon Pass opens or stays closed appear to be related to how closely the stress levels on the two fault systems are aligned with each other at the time of rupture,” Burkhard said. “Right now, with stress at historically high levels across the region and more than 160 years elapsed since the last major rupture, the system is in a critically loaded state.”
Results from this study suggest the stress that would normally be released in large earthquakes has continued to accumulate and is now at unprecedented levels.
Perhaps most importantly, the study showed that Cajon Pass could facilitate a joint rupture of the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults simultaneously, which is a scenario that could be significantly more damaging than a single-fault event.
And one that affects densely populated areas including Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside and the Coachella Valley.
This kind of physics-based stress modeling can help refine seismic hazard assessments and inform infrastructure planning, emergency preparedness and building codes in the region.
Present-day modeled stress accumulation of the San Andreas Fault System. (Courtesy Graphic: Burkhard et al)
Additionally, the modeling framework used in this study is applicable to other complex fault junctions globally, so the researchers are interested in developing it as a reusable tool for multi-fault hazard assessments.
“This is not a prediction of when an earthquake will happen,” Burkhard said. “However, studies like this are important contributions to national and global earthquake hazard research in that we are using rigorous, quantitative science to better understand the risk facing millions of people."
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