Any difference between fault zone and fault system?

Question

Earthquake fault names vary a bit. The San Andreas is a "fault zone" and the O'Neil is a "fault system". What's the difference (if any) between a "fault zone" and a "fault system"?

Answer 1

As an intelligent outsider, I take fault zone to mean that there is a concentration of faults that are not linked while a fault system is a pattern of related faults. For example, the faults in a valley might be from scrunching the area due to plate movement and subduction while a fault system might be a rectangle around a fault block or a series marking the border of a plate in slip movement. You can have a zone before you have done enough research to prove the faults in the zone are part of a system.