Hidden Mountainville Fault Behind 2024 New Jersey Earthquake Uncovered
Columbia University researchers used LiDAR, aftershock locations, 3D seismic data, and lab tests to identify a previously unmapped, immature basement fault—the Mountainville Fault—about 3.5 km west of the Tewksbury epicenter. This fault better fits the 2024 Mw4.8 New Jersey quake than the Ramapo Fault and suggests a local shallow stress perturbation plus fault heterogeneity contributed to the event, indicating that immature faults could be significant earthquake sources in intraplate regions and deserve further study.