He reports the finding in tomorrow's issue of the journal Nature.
Mary Lou Zoback is a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California.
She said Fialko "really exploits the true power" of modern satellite radar and GPS equipment to reach a conclusion with a familiar message.
"The conclusion seems to concur with previous interpretations that the southern San Andreas Fault is in a late stage of its earthquake cyclemeaning it's likely to go," she said.
San Andreas Fault
Fialko used a technique called interferometric aperture radar (InSAR), a set of satellite-based radar systems that are able to detect 1-millimeter (0.04-inch) displacements in the Earth's crust.
The satellite data, combined with ground-based GPS measurements, allowed Fialko to calculate how much the North American and Pacific plates slip past each other on the San Andreas Faultabout 1 inch (25 millimeters) a year.
But the plates are locked together along the southern section of the fault. As a result, the plate motion builds up underneath the crust as stress.
(See an interactive feature on how earthquakes form.)
Over the past 300 years, energy equivalent to 20 to 26 feet (6 to 8 meters) of slip has accumulated below the locked part of the southern San Andreas Fault, according to Fialko.
"This is an indication the fault is storing significant elastic strain, and the amount of strain is equivalent to a major earthquake," he said.
According to Zoback, the amount of strain Fialko's calculations show is at the high end of estimates obtained from other research using different methods.
"That's like being ten months pregnantpast all reasonable estimates of when it should go," she said.
Zoback adds that an increase in earthquake activity in southern California over the past several decades may indicate the main fault is ready to rupture.
A similar increase in earthquake activity occurred on the northern section of the fault in the 70 years prior to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, she notes.
"We may be seeing something similar," she said.
Moderate temblorsincluding 1994's magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake in Los Angelesmay be a sign that tectonic stress in the region is reaching a breaking point, according to Zoback.
And if the Big One hits, what are the consequences?
Unlike the northern section of the San Andreas Fault, which slices through the middle of the heavily populated San Francisco Bay Area, the southern section of the fault passes through mostly uninhabited desert, Zoback says.
However, computer simulations show that a southern California earthquake that ruptures toward the north could be devastating. The energy from an earthquake is focused in the direction of the rupture, Fialko explains.
For an earthquake of magnitude 7.5 to 8 that ruptures east of San Diego toward San Bernardino, the "shaking in Los Angeles would be extremely strong and extensive," he said.
Free Email News Updates
Sign up for our Inside National Geographic newsletter. Every two weeks we'll send you our top stories and pictures (see sample).
SOURCES AND RELATED WEB SITES