subduction

Just off its east coast, deep beneath the seafloor, giant chunks of Earth’s lithosphere and crust are being sucked beneath the country in a process called subduction.

"This is the first time we have a clear picture of a subduction zone caught in the act of dying," said Shuck.

When the massive subduction zone lying under the Pacific Northwest shifts, it does so violently.

New research offers the theory that the San Andreas fault and the Cascadia subduction zone could produce devastating back-to-back earthquake disasters.

They are two of the West Coast’s most destructive generators of huge earthquakes: the San Andreas fault in California and the Cascadia subduction zone offshore of California’s North Coast, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.