"trace the cause" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It means to investigate or follow the root or source of something. For example: "The detective was determined to trace the cause of the mysterious disappearance." Here, the phrase is used to show that the detective is trying to find the reason for the disappearance. Another example: "In order to solve the problem, we must first trace the cause of it." In this sentence, the phrase is used to express the idea that in order to find a solution, one must first understand the root cause of the issue.
The report highlights the detective work done by city agencies to trace the cause of the outbreaks and stem any further spread.
Dr Andrea Sella, a chemistry expert from University College London, said the difficulty facing doctors trying to trace the cause of the illness was knowing what to look for.
The difference is that the ENSO impacts can be related to a specific and predictable climate phenomenon, whereas for many climate and weather events, scientists cannot trace the cause of an event to such a phenomenon.
So, if you do not wish to go around in circles trying to trace the cause of a questionable result, record everything honestly and faithfully.
In the past it was not generally recognized that medical treatment might involve carcinogenic risks; moreover, various therapeutic measures are often used simultaneously so that it may be difficult to trace the cause of tumor formation to a specific agent.
20 Either explanation is credible to those who trace the cause of it to God; 21 for while we, in estimating all things by the scale of man's power, consider many things to be wholly impossible, for God nothing in the whole world can be difficult or impossible.
To control this complexity, we used a flexible design facilitating the elimination of feedback loops and processes to trace the causes of the complex behavior of the model.
Social ecologists trace the causes of environmental degradation to the existence of unjust, hierarchical relationships in human society, which they see as endemic to the large-scale social structures of modern capitalist states.
An affected child can face hundreds of outpatient visits to different specialists in the first few years of life as doctors struggle to trace the causes of their symptoms.
We trace the causes back to the profound impact that early twentieth century discourse about water control had on Spain's socio-natural landscape: an impact that extended far beyond water management.
School subjects are secondary organizers, elaborating our primary organizers as necessary to make sense not much to arrange to meet someone for coffee, more to complete a police report of a crime scene or describe a social problem, a great deal more to trace the causes of an international crisis or the trends of an era.
