© JPLThe Los Angeles area is threaded with many buried faults, some of which have never been mapped. A new study suggests that a magnitude 5.0 or greater earthquake on at least one of these faults is virtually a sure thing in the next few years.
The Greater Los Angeles area has a 99.9 percent chance of having an earthquake of magnitude 5.0 or greater in the next two and a half years, thanks to several hidden faults that have built up considerable strain, according to a study published Sept. 30 in the journal Earth and Space Science.
But exactly where this next medium-size temblor could strike is less clear, because any one of the many faults that thread through the area could rupture.
"Identifying specific fault structures most likely to be responsible for future earthquakes for this system of many active faults is often very difficult," Andrea Donnellan, a geologist in the Science Division of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.
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