transform fault

A strike-slip fault, common in mid-ocean ridge regions, in which there has been a sudden change in the form or direction of displacement.

One of the three fundamental types of boundaries between the mobile lithospheric plates that cover the surface of the Earth. Whereas spreading centers mark sites where crust is created between diverging plates, and subduction zones are where crust is destroyed between convergent plates, transform faults separate plates that are sliding past each other with neither creation nor destruction of crust. The primary tectonic feature of all transform faults is a strike-slip fault zone, a generally vertical fracture parallel to the relative motion between the two plates that it separates. Strike-slip fault zones are described as right-lateral if the far side is moving right relative to the near side or left-lateral if it is moving to the left. Not all such fault zones are plate-bounding transform faults. Small-scale strike-slip faulting is a common secondary feature of many subduction zones, especially where plate convergence is oblique, and of some spreading centers, especially those with propagating rifts; it also occurs locally deep in plate interiors. The distinguishing characteristic of a transform fault is that both ends extend to a junction with another type of plate boundary. At these junctions the divergent or convergent motion along the other boundaries is transformed into purely lateral slip. See also Earth crust; Plate tectonics; Subduction zones.

Transform faults are most readily classified by the types of plate boundary intersected at their ends, the variety of lithosphere (oceanic or continental) they separate, and by whether they are isolated or are part of a multifault system. The common oceanic type is the ridge-ridge transform, linking two literally offset axes of a spreading center. Also common are transform faults that link the end of a spreading center to a triple junction, the meeting place of three plates and three plate boundaries. See also Lithosphere; Mid-Oceanic Ridge.

Other types are long trench-trench transforms at the northern and southern margins of the Caribbean plate, and the combined San Andreas/Gulf of California transform, which separates the North American and Pacific plates for 1500 mi (2400 km) between triple junctions at Cape Mendocino (California) and the mouth of the Gulf of California. Strike-slip faulting in the Gulf of California (and on the northern Caribbean plate boundary) occurs along several parallel zones linked by short spreading centers, and the overall structure is more properly called a transform fault system; similar fault patterns are found at many ridge-ridge transforms. Along a few strike-slip fault zones, lithospheric plates slide quietly and almost continuously past each other by the process called aseismic creep. Much more often, frictional resistance to the sliding in the brittle crust causes the accumulation of shear stresses that are episodically or periodically relieved by sudden shifts of crustal blocks, creating earthquakes. The largest lateral shifts (slips) of the ground surface along major continental transform faults have been associated with some of the largest earthquakes on record; in 1906 the Pacific plate alongside 270 mi (450 km) of the San Andreas Fault suddenly moved an average of 15 ft (4.5 m) northwest relative to the North American plate on the other side, and the resulting magnitude-8.2 earthquake destroyed much of San Francisco. The average slip in this single event was equivalent to about 150–250 years of Pacific–North American plate motion. See also Earthquake; Fault and fault structures; Seismology.

Faults which are parallel to the arc of sea floor spreading. They are strike-slip faults, running transversely from the faults across the oceanic ridge which they have displaced. The Pacific plate, for example, is separated from the American plate by the 600 km long San Andreas fault.

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