Understanding the restless fault’s mantle-to-crust connections provides critical information for understanding the lithospheric-scale fault’s seismic cycle, says Newell, associate professor in USU’s Department of Geosciences. “It’s a big, sweeping fault and the source of a magnitude 7.9 earthquake in 2002 that ruptured more than 200 miles of the Denali Fault, along with the Totschunda Fault to the east, causing significant damage to remote villages and central Alaska’s infrastructure,” says Utah State University geochemist Dennis Newell. The long-lived and active strike-slip fault system, which slices through Denali National Park and Preserve, is responsible for the formation of the Alaska Range. The 1,200-mile-long Denali Fault stretches in an upward arc from southwestern Alaska and the Bering Sea eastward to western Canada’s Yukon Territory and British Columbia.
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