Earth Quake Seismic Activity

Recording the Earth's Seismic Activity

In general, the map that contained all the earthquake distributions mostly had shallow quakes spread around. Deep quakes on the map were a lot less common. I would estimate that about 85%-90% of the earthquakes were shallow quakes. There were only three earthquakes on the map that had a magnitude of 7.0 or greater. The earthquakes that appeared to have occurred along spreading zones made up about 80% of the earthquakes on the map. Earthquakes that have occurred in these areas generally have ocean ridges. The other areas where earthquakes happen are on subduction zones where there usually are ocean trenches and oceanic mountain ranges. About 13% of the earthquakes on the map occurred along subduction zones. Out of all of the earthquakes on the map, I would say that about twenty of the quakes do not appear to be associated with any active plate boundary. The most powerful earthquakes that were plotted on the map occurred along subduction zones. The deepest earthquakes on the map also occurred along subduction zones. The geological factors that might explain the different levels of earthquake activity seen in the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean basins is that in the Atlantic Ocean basin, there is a divergent spreading zone. On the other hand, the Pacific Ocean basin is on a subduction zone. Overall in the three-week period, the population centers that experienced the largest numbers of earthquakes were East India and Indonesia. The earthquakes that occurred in India and Indonesia were very well reported in the news because it caused deaths of more than 100,000 people and billions of dollars worth of damage.

...