Origins of Mountains - Mountain Geography: Physical and Human Dimensions - page 53

FIGURE 2.22 (A) At a contractional or restraining jog in a strike-slip fault, the resulting unequal com-
pression of the rocks can force multiple sheaves of rock (B) up out of the ground. (C) The result
is a transpressive, flower or palm-tree structure. (After Twiss and Moores 1992.)
In another major type of faulting, one piece of land surface is displaced horizontally
past another to create strike-slip or transform faults. This faulting is less important to
mountain building than those producing primarily vertical displacement, but is never-
theless an important process. The San Andreas Fault of California, extending in a north-
westerly direction from Mexico to the northern Pacific for 3,000 km (∼1,900 mi), is a
highly active strike-slip fault that is the source of the region's most violent earthquakes