Walker Lane

The Walker Lane is a geologic trough roughly aligned with the California/Nevada border southward to where Death Valley intersects the Garlock Fault, a major left lateral, or sinistral, strike-slip fault. The north-northwest end of the Walker Lane is between Pyramid Lake in Nevada and California's Lassen Peak[1][2] where the Honey Lake Fault Zone, the Warm Springs Valley Fault, and the Pyramid Lake Fault Zone[3] meet the transverse tectonic zone forming the southern boundary of the Modoc Plateau and Columbia Plateau provinces. The Walker Lane takes up 15 to 25 percent of the boundary motion between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, the other 75 percent being taken up by the San Andreas Fault system to the west.[4][5] The Walker Lane may represent an incipient major transform fault zone which could replace the San Andreas as the plate boundary in the future.[6][3]

Walker Lane Deformation Belt
LocationCalifornia, Nevada
Length500 mi (800 km)
NW Nevada volcanic field
Pyramid Lake
Walker Lake
Long Valley Caldera
Owens Valley
Yucca Mountain
Death Valley
The Walker Lane includes Death Valley, the Owens Valley, Pyramid Lake, & Walker Lake.

The Walker Lane deformation belt accommodates nearly 12 mm/yr of dextral shear between the Sierra Nevada-Great Valley Block and North America.[7][8] The belt is characterized by the northwest-striking trans-current faults and co-evolutionary dip-slip faults formed as result of a spatially segregated displacement field.[9]

Eastern California shear zone

The eastern California shear zone is the portion of the Walker Lane that extends south from Owens Valley, and continues across and south of the Garlock Fault, across the Mojave Desert to the San Andreas Fault.[10] Several magnitude 7+ earthquakes have occurred along the eastern California shear zone, including the 1992 Landers Earthquake, 1999 Hector Mine earthquake, the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquakes sequence, as well as the massive 1872 Lone Pine earthquake in the Owens Valley.

References
  1. "Walker Lane" (PDF). A Tapestry of Time and Terrain: The Union of Two Maps - Geology and Topography. United States Geological Survey. Retrieved 2010-06-06.
  2. "Active Deformation of the Walker Lane Belt". Active Tectonics Class Projects. University of Arizona Department of Geosciences. Retrieved 2009-12-20.
  3. Geoff Manaugh (May 2019). "Nevada by the sea". Wired. p. 63.
  4. Bernard Guest; et al. (2007). "Stateline fault system: A new component of the Miocene-Quaternary Eastern California shear zone". Geological Society of America Bulletin. 119 (11–12): 1337–1347. Bibcode:2007GSAB..119.1337G. doi:10.1130/0016-7606(2007)119[1337:SFSANC]2.0.CO;2.
  5. Wesnousky (2005). "Active faulting in the Walker Lane". Tectonics. 24 (3): n/a. Bibcode:2005Tecto..24.3009W. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.463.7174. doi:10.1029/2004TC001645.
  6. Faulds, James E.; Christopher D. Henry; Nicholas H. Hinz (2005). "Kinematics of the northern Walker Lane: An incipient transform fault along the Pacific–North American plate boundary". Geology. 33 (6): 505. Bibcode:2005Geo....33..505F. doi:10.1130/G21274.1.
  7. Oldow, J.S.; C.L.V. Aiken; J.L. Hare; J.F. Ferguson; R.F. Hardyman (January 2001). "Active displacement transfer and differential block motion within the central Walker Lane, western Great Basin". Geology. 29 (1): 19–22. Bibcode:2001Geo....29...19O. doi:10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029<0019:ADTADB>2.0.CO;2.
  8. Unruh, Jeffrey; James Humphrey; Andrew Barron (April 2003). "Transtensional model for the Sierra Nevada frontal fault system, eastern California". Geology. 31 (4): 327–330. Bibcode:2003Geo....31..327U. doi:10.1130/0091-7613(2003)031<0327:TMFTSN>2.0.CO;2.
  9. Dokka, R.K., and Travis, C.J., 1990, Role of the eastern California shear zone in accommodating Pacific-North American plate motion: Geophysical Research Letters, v. 17, p. 1323-1326.
  10. Frankel, K. L.; Glazner, A. F.; Kirby, E.; Monastero, F. C.; Strane, M. D.; Oskin, M. E.; Unruh, J. R.; Walker, J. D.; Anandakrishnan, S.; Bartley, J. M.; Coleman, D. S.; Dolan, J. F.; Finkel, R. C.; Greene, D.; Kylander-Clark, A.; Morrero, S.; Owen, L.A.; Phillips, F. (2008). "Active tectonics of the eastern California shear zone" (PDF). Field Guide to Plutons, Volcanoes, Faults, Reefs, Dinosaurs, and Possible Glaciation in Selected Areas of Arizona, California, and Nevada. Geological Society of America. pp. 43–82. ISBN 978-0-8137-0011-3.

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