Is it true that California could be underwater in a certain amount of years do to plate tectonic activity? If so, what will cause it to be underwater?

-- Daniel Lake (Danls1@aol.com), February 01, 2001

Answers

"The San Andreas fault is a seam running between the North American tectonic plate and a huge oceanic plate that is moving northwest at approximately 2 inches per year. It is widely believed that south- western California will be eventually pulled into the sea. South San Francisco and the Baja Peninsula will be the approximate area that will some day become an island." Fortunately, seismologists do not believe that this is going to happen for a few millennia. Discovery Online has an excellent article on this (from which I derived this answer): http://www.discovery.com/exp/earthquakes/earthquakes.html

-- Terry McCall (mccall@oswego.edu), February 04, 2001.

The San Andreas fault is a transform fault. Perhaps if it were a divergent plate boundary, a piece of California would slowly drift away. As it is, the San Andreas fault creates and will create a lot of earthquake activity, and not drastically change the landscape.

-- Christine Stenglein (carobchips@hotmail.com), February 25, 2001.