Earthquakes & Plate Tectonics

Listening to the news - you would have seen that another Earth Quake happened today in Taiwan. It was a 6.2 on the Richter Scale, or way to measure seismic activity. This comes days after Chile and a short time after Haiti. It has been some time since my last science class so I wanted to look at the tectonic plates. Originally, millions of years ago, according to science, the world was on continent called a Pangaea. Over time, the plates shifted to the current continents, or earth that has raised above water level.

Tectonic plates are the sections of the earth or major a layer. I am not going to get into the details, you can click on any of the links listed to study for yourself. However, I find it interesting that the major fault lines for Chile and Haiti lay along the edge of the Nazca Plate and Pacific Plate. According to the Seismologist view that would imply that the plates are shifting. They are colliding, overlapping or shifting. The impact causes the earthquake. Mountains are also formed this way, as a way for the earth to shift when under stress. One moves inward as the other buckles which creates the mountain. Now back the point...

Every action has a reaction, which is the case in kinetic actions. One movement creates another. In this case, the Nazca, Pacific, Eurasian, South American, and African plates are shifting.  If you plot the major recent (announced) earthquakes they fall within the plates touching the Pacific plate. This plate is also a part of the San Francisco fault line which has not moved for sometime - so that we can note. However it would not be suprising to see another noted earthquake along these plates. With several ranging up to an 8 on the Richter Scale this would show a large amount of movement within the plates.



A great resource to see the actual noted Earth seismic activity is www.iris.edu. Amazing and humbling site. To finish, I have added some additional information since we were talking about San Francisco. Accorging to the USGS-UCB there have been several small motions around the US West Coast area which indicates that there is motion with the Pacific Plate.

Not to bombard you with information - but while I was in Rochelle, IL a few weeks ago there was a recorded earthquake in the area. So I did due diligence and researched to find another image which shows recent activity in the world, which included the small "shaker" in IL. Granted, it was nothing to note - but this map does show major movement along the Pacific plate.
To close this entry, I also want to show you an image from the www.iris.edu website that I discovered during my short research. Below, you will find another view from Seismologists. All of the data points to the Pacific plate moving. I would speculate that another earthquake will happen around this plate or touching plates based on kinetic energy and the severity and frequency of the recent events.I have also included a YouTube.com video to show the basic concepts of plate tectonics.

 Image is from www.iris.com extracted by Snag It on 03/04/10