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valley, so the true surface of the solid rock floor in Death Valley is many hundreds of metres lower still. The steep face leading from the top of the Panamint Range to the rock floor of Death Valley is a normal fault, the result of numerous small shifts of height, each one accompanied by an earthquake.
The whole of East Africa has been lifted up into an even bigger dome, and long rift valleys have been formed on either side of the dome. This has produced the East African Rift Valley system, and in it lie some of the world’s biggest lakes.
Transcurrent fault landscapes
When crust moves sideways as opposed to vertically, there is less obvious impact on the landscape. This
is the case with the San Andreas Fault in California, for example, which is not readily obvious from the ground. This fault moves, on average, five centimetres each year. And so, even though it does not have a major impact on the landscape, it is a source of frequent earthquakes and causes considerable damage. The landscape effects are
(Above) Death Valley is part of
the Basin and Range region of southwestern United States (see also the satellite picture on page 27). Death Valley, with the white covering of salt, is the rift, or graben, while the mountains to either side are horsts. This picture shows the Panamint Range.
(Below) Part of the San Andreas Fault.