LOS ANGELES – Earthquakes tend to create mountains. But the Easter tremor that rocked the Mexico-California border actually lowered one.
Using GPS and remote sensing, a cross-border team of scientists found that the northeast side of the 3,000-foot-tall Sierra Cucapah in Mexico sank 5 feet after the April magnitude-7.2 Baja California quake.
Researchers studying earthquake faults in the region say this could mean the fault network is young.
Findings were presented Thursday at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.
The Baja quake has proved to be one of the most complex quakes along the Pacific and North American plates, involving at least six faults that ruptured in two directions.
The quake briefly increased pressure on two faults in California. Seismicity on those faults has since gone back to background levels.
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