Geology Photo of the Day - Part 5

I try to refrain from doing two posts in a day (Geojeopardy! Fridays must go on) but since I have done this all week I will keep it up. Check out Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 here. Also @GeoEvelyn has been reposting some of the Geology Picture Memes on her Twitter account.

The last picture of the week is one a couple of blocks from my office in Salt Lake City, UT. It may seem like a grassy hill but what you are actually looking at is one of the potentially deadliest faults in the US. This is the Wasatch Fault fault scarp at Faultline Gardens and it is currently overdue for one of it's typical ~7.0 magnitude faults. What that would do to Salt Lake City is pretty much level it to the ground (being build on loose sediment for the most part). Yea liquifaction.

I love how when people moved to SLC they didn't realize this was a fault and built directly on top of it. Even digging out the fault scarp to get a better foundation for their building. That has since become illegal (to build on the fault) but I know several apartment complexes that will be ripped right in half when the earthquake comes (there was one directly behind me when I took the picture).