It is a transform boundary formed on the west coast of North America in California. The San Andreas Fault, pictured below, is a well-known right-lateral transform boundary that runs much of the length of California’s west coast separating the North American plate to the east from the Pacific plate to the west. The transform plate boundary between the Pacific and North American Plates in western California formed fairly recently. The second approach is to treat the transform as a shear zone that applies a stress boundary condition to the plates on either side [e.g., Platt et al., 2008]. Transform Boundary: Definition And Examples | Science Trends An intriguing aspect of the geodetically defined velocity field in California is that the zone of highest strain-rate does not everywhere coincide with the surface trace of the San Andreas Fault (SAF). They are also known as conservative boundaries, as no new crust (lithosphere) is created or destroyed. Examples San Andreas Fault. 3 PLATT AND BECKER: TRANSFORM BOUNDARY IN CALIFORNIA 10.1029/2010GC003060 3of19 [8] Roy and Royden [2000a, 2000b] suggested that surface velocities are a result of the diffusion of deformation above a master fault at depth, medi-ated by the ductile lower crust. It is a continental transform fault.
It ends abruptly where it connects to another plate boundary, either another transform, a spreading ridge, or a subduction zone..
The San Andreas fault of California is a prime example of a continental transform boundary; others are the North Anatolian fault of northern Turkey, the Alpine fault crossing New Zealand, the Dead Sea rift in the Middle East, the Queen Charlotte Islands fault off western Canada, and the Magellanes-Fagnano fault system of South America. There are, however, a few transform boundaries that occur on continents. A transform fault or transform boundary is a fault along a plate boundary where the motion is predominantly horizontal. The San Andreas Fault is a transform boundary, which means the two plates are sliding alongside each other. The transform has a length of order 10 3 km and applies a load to plates with dimensions of order 10 4 km, so the stress decays away from the boundary. This model depends About 200 million years ago, a large tectonic plate (called the Farallon Plate) started to subduct beneath the western edge of North America. Transform Boundary Examples The San Andreas Fault.