Will California become a island in a few centuries

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Will California become a island in a few centuries? Break off from the North American continent.

That's the way it's headed, sure. Well, the San Fransisco area, anyway. It'll take a little longer than a couple centuries though. If you figure that continental drift moves at the rate fingernails grow...

Millions of years, but some other parts of the world will look also different:

The Alps will be significant higher, between Germany and France will be a sea (on the maps you see today a wide rift between Basel and Frankfurt, which becomes wider and deeper each year):



Africa is pushing hard against Europe, so the Mediterranean Sea will disappear, etc. etc.

I'll inform the EU, if they start work on admitting African nations they might just be ready when the continents merge.

I remember hearing that it would only be about a couple of centuries before California either breaks off the North American continent or sinks into the ocean.

I'm not sure if that's true. This is my understanding from briefly reading about it: some distance from the area to the north and south you've got subduction of the Pacific plate beneath the continent. California, however, is generally experiencing shear with the land nearest the coast moving NW. To the south, the spur of land to the west of the Gulf of California was initially displaced from further south by that shear, although also experienced rotation about the north end as that became locked with the mainland again, opening the Gulf. The complicating factor is the interaction of the East Pacific Rise (a spreading centre in the oceanic plate), that's also acting to open the Gulf. That's moved towards the American continent and has been partially subducted.

Overall, however, the prevalent forces are compressional along that coast of the Pacific, and most of the land is composed of various accreted terranes, so I'm not sure if the assertion that California will become an island is correct, although the situation is fairly complicated. Of course, on a shorter timescale glacio-eustatic mechanisms could act to give the same result. I know there's a low area to the west of the Sierra Nevada, and if there's an opening to the sea, that could flood. I don't know enough about the area, though, so someone else could comment.

It will also have to do with the level of the sea: Britain became only a island after the last ice age.

no. the pacific plate is grinding up the north-american plate. it will eventually run up the coast and, were we all alive and if they survive, we could be watching polar bears instead of palm trees.


http://www.platetectonics.com/book/page_15.asp

Last edited by Nan on 01 Jun 2009, 12:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

there was a lot out, about 20 years ago, where persons of dubious educational background were claiming that CA was "going to fall off into the ocean." it cannot "fall off".... i think the next batch of 'em went for the asteroid strike causing the end of life as we know it, and after that it was the year 2000 global meltdown, and now it'll probably be either a pandemic or hordes of starving third-worlders swarming across the borders to destroy us.

don't believe everything you hear. especially if it's in the media.

That doesn't sound too bad, considering they're sucking up most of the country's fresh water.

Part of California will detach, but not in a few centuries.

ruveyn

I did cover that, Dussel: