The California geodimeter network; measuring movement along the San Andreas Fault

Abstract

Following the great California earthquake of 1906 H. F. Reid, a contemporary seismologist, proposed the elastic rebound theory which in effect says that earthquake potential arises from the accumulation of elastic strain within the Earth's crust, just as the stretching of a rubberband creates the potential for violent rebound upon rupture. A direct manifestation of this crustal strain accumulation is the change in distance between adjacent points along opposite sides of a fault. In order to measure the rate at which strain is accumulating along California's San Andreas fault, a netwrok of precise survey lines which criss-cross the fault along its entire lenght in the State is periodically resurveyed with very accurate electro-opitcal distance measuring devices called geodimeters.