Geosciences research professor Lee Liberty recently published a journal article titled “A Broad, Distributed Active Fault Zone Lies beneath Salt Lake City, Utah” in the journal, The Seismic Record.
The piece was recently featured on phys.org, as well as on the Seismological Society of America website and Fox 13 Salt Lake City.
An excerpt from the study’s abstract reads: “Although the Wasatch fault is currently known to have a high‐seismic hazard from motion along range‐bounding faults, new seismic data reveal faulted and folded 13,000–30,000‐yr‐old Lake Bonneville strata beneath Salt Lake City (SLC). Coupled with previous excavation trench, borehole, and other geologic and geophysical observations, we conclude that a zone of latest Pleistocene and/or Holocene faulting and folding kinematically links the East Bench and Warm Springs faults through a 3 km wide relay structure and transfer zone.”