The Queen Charlotte basin is located off the west coast of Canada, but within the North American plate (Dietrich 1993). It borders the Pacific plate to the east. As well as the Explorer plate in the south, where the Pacific, Explorer and North American plates form the Vancouver triple junction (Dietrich 1993). The petrology of this Tertiary basin consists of Eocene and Pliocene volcanic and clastic sediments overlaying a Mesozoic basement (Dietrich 1993). An array of extensional faults, reverse faults, strike-slip faults and oblique-slip faults trend north, north-west (Dietrich 1993). Graben structures formed by extensional faults produced sub-basins of up to 3 kilometers deep (Dietrich 1993). Reverse faults and flower structures, due to oblique-slip faults, are found in the north-west corner of the basin, indicating a compressional regime (Dietrich 1933). A notable fault, which borders the basin to the west, is the strike-slip, right-lateral Queen Charlotte fault, which extents from southern Alaska down to the Vancouver triple point (Kristin 2000). The Queen Charlotte basin produces some of Canada’s largest earthquakes with magnitudes of up to 8.1 in 1949! (USGS website)
Sources
J.R. Dietrich, R. Higgs, K.M. Rohr and J.M. White, 1993. The Tiertiary Queen Charlotte Basin: a strike-slip basin on the western Canadian continental margin. Geological Survey of Canada, 20 (1993) p.161-169.
Kristin M. M. Rohr, Maren Scheidhauer, Anne M. Trehu, 2000. Transpression between two warm mafic plates: The Queen Charlotte Fault revisited, Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 105 (2000) p.8147-8172
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/poster/2012/20121028.php
Sources
J.R. Dietrich, R. Higgs, K.M. Rohr and J.M. White, 1993. The Tiertiary Queen Charlotte Basin: a strike-slip basin on the western Canadian continental margin. Geological Survey of Canada, 20 (1993) p.161-169.
Kristin M. M. Rohr, Maren Scheidhauer, Anne M. Trehu, 2000. Transpression between two warm mafic plates: The Queen Charlotte Fault revisited, Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 105 (2000) p.8147-8172
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/poster/2012/20121028.php