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Earthquake

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An earthquake is a phenomenon that results from and is powered by the sudden release of stress in rocks that radiates seismic waves. At the Earth's surface, earthquakes may manifest themselves by a shaking or displacement of the ground and sometimes tsunamis, which may lead to loss of life and destruction of property.

Earthquakes may occur naturally or as a result of human activities. In its most generic sense, the word earthquake is used to describe any seismic event—whether a natural phenomenon or an event caused by humans—that generates seismic waves.

Global earthquake epicenters, 1963–1998

Types of earthquakes

Naturally occurring earthquakes

Most naturally occurring earthquakes are related to the tectonic nature of the Earth. Such earthquakes are called tectonic earthquakes. The Earth's lithosphere is a patch work of plates (see plate tectonics) in slow but constant motion caused by the heat in the Earth's mantle and core. Plate boundaries glide past each other, creating frictional stress. When the frictional stress exceeds a critical value, called local strength, a sudden failure occurs. The boundary of tectonic plates along which failure occurs is called the fault plane. When the failure at the fault plane results in a violent displacement of the Earth's crust, the elastic strain energy is released and elastic waves are radiated, thus causing an earthquake. It is estimated that only 10 percent or less of an earthquake's total energy is ultimately radiated as seismic energy, while most of the earthquake's energy is used to power the earthquake fracture growth and is eventually converted into heat. Therefore, earthquakes lower the Earth's available potential energy and thermal energy, though these losses are negligible. To describe the physical process of occurrence of an earthquake, seismologists use the Elastic-rebound theory.

The majority of tectonic earthquakes originate at depths not exceeding a few tens of kilometers. Earthquakes occurring at boundaries of tectonic plates are called interplate earthquakes, while the less frequent events that occur in the interior of the lithospheric plates are called intraplate earthquakes.

Where the crust is thicker and colder, earthquakes occur at greater depths of hundreds of kilometers along subduction zones where plates descend into the Earth's mantle. These types of earthquakes are called deep focus earthquakes. They are possibly generated when subducted lithospheric material catastrophically undergoes a phase transition (e.g., olivine to spinel), releasing stored energy—such as elastic strain, chemical energy or gravitational energy—that cannot be supported at the pressures and temperatures present at such depths.

Earthquakes may also occur in volcanic regions and are caused by the movement of magma in volcanoes. Such quakes can be an early warning of volcanic eruptions.

A recently proposed theory suggests that some earthquakes may occur in a sort of earthquake storm, where one earthquake will trigger a series of earthquakes each triggered by the previous shifts on the fault lines, similar to aftershocks, but occurring years later, and with some of the later earthquakes as damaging as the early ones. Such a pattern was observed in the sequence of about a dozen earthquakes that struck the Anatolian Fault in Turkey in the 20th Century, the half dozen large earthquakes in New Madrid in 1811-1812, and has been inferred for older anomalous clusters of large earthquakes in the Middle East and in the Mojave Desert.

Induced earthquakes

Some earthquakes are the result of a number of anthropogenic sources, such as extraction of minerals and fossil fuel from the Earth's crust, the removal or injection of fluids into the crust, reservoir-induced seismicity, massive explosions, and collapse of large buildings. These seismic events caused by human activity are referred to by the term induced seismicity. They however are not strictly earthquakes and usually show a different seismogram than earthquakes that occur naturally.

A rare few earthquakes have been associated with the build-up of large masses of water behind dams, such as the Kariba Dam in Zambia, Africa, and with the injection or extraction of fluids into the Earth's crust (e.g. at certain geothermal power plants and at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal). Such earthquakes occur because the strength of the Earth's crust can be modified by fluid pressure. Earthquakes have also been known to be caused by the removal of natural gas from subsurface deposits, for instance in the northern Netherlands. The world’s largest reservoir-induced earthquake occurred on December 10, 1967 in the Koyna region of western Maharashtra in India. It had a mgnitude of 6.3 on the richter scale. However, the U.S. geological survey reported the magnitude of 6.8.


The detonation of powerful explosives, such as nuclear explosions, can cause low-magnitude ground shaking. Thus, the 50-megaton nuclear bomb code-named Ivan detonated by the Soviet Union in 1961 created a seismic event comparable to a magnitude 7 earthquake, producing the seismic shock so powerful that it was measurable even on its third passage around the Earth. In an effort to promote nuclear non-proliferation, the International Atomic Energy Agency uses the tools of seismology to detect illicit activities such as nuclear weapons tests. The nuclear nations routinely monitor each others activities through networks of interconnected seismometers, which allow to precisely locate the source of an explosion.

Characteristics

Damage from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
Section of collapsed freeway after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

Earthquakes occur on a daily basis around the world, most detected only by seismometers and causing no damage. Large earthquakes however can cause serious destruction and massive loss of life through a variety of agents of damage, including fault rupture, vibratory ground motion (shaking), inundation (tsunami, seiche, or dam failure), various kinds of permanent ground failure (liquefaction, landslides), and fire or a release of hazardous materials. In a particular earthquake, any of these agents of damage can dominate, and historically each has caused major damage and great loss of life; nonetheless, for most earthquakes shaking is the dominant and most widespread cause of damage. There are four types of seismic waves that are all generated simultaneously and can be felt on the ground. Responsible for the shaking hazard, they are P-waves (primary waves), S-waves (secondary or shear waves) and two types of surfaces waves, (Love waves and Rayleigh waves).

Most large earthquakes are accompanied by other, smaller ones that can occur either before or after the main shock; these are called foreshocks and aftershocks, respectively. While almost all earthquakes have aftershocks, foreshocks occur in only about 10% of events. The power of an earthquake is always distributed over a significant area, but in large earthquakes, it can even spread over the entire planet. Ground motions caused by very distant earthquakes are called teleseisms. The Rayleigh waves from the Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake of 2004 caused ground motion of over 1 cm even at seismometers that were located far from it, although this displacement was abnormally large. Using such ground motion records from around the world, seismologists can identify a point from which the earthquake's seismic waves apparently originated. That point is called its focus or hypocenter and usually coincides with the point where the fault slip started. The location on the surface directly above the hypocenter is known as the epicenter. The total length of the section of a fault that slips, the rupture zone, can be as long as 1,000 km for the biggest earthquakes.

Earthquakes that occur below sea level and have large vertical displacements can give rise to tsunamis, either as a direct result of the deformation of the sea bed due to the earthquake or as a result of submarine landslides directly or indirectly triggered by the quake.


Measuring earthquakes

Since seismologists cannot directly observe rupture in the Earth's interior, they rely on geodetic measurements and numerical experiments to analyze seismic waves. Such analyses allow scientists to estimate the locations and likelihoods of future earthquakes, helping identify areas of greatest hazard and ensure safety of people and infrastructure located in such areas.

Severity

The severity of an earthquake is described by both magnitude and intensity. These two frequently-confused terms both refer to different, but related, observations. Magnitude, usually expressed as an Arabic numeral, characterizes the size of an earthquake by measuring indirectly the energy released. By contrast, intensity indicates the local effects and potential for damage produced by an earthquake on the Earth's surface as it affects humans, animals, structures, and natural objects such as bodies of water. Intensities are usually expressed in roman numerals, each representing the severity of the shaking resulting from an earthquake. Any given earthquake can be described by only one magnitude, but many intensities since the earthquake effects vary with circumstances such as distance from the epicenter and local soil conditions.

Charles Richter, the creator of the Richter magnitude scale, distinguished intensity and magnitude as follows: "I like to use the analogy with radio transmissions. It applies in seismology because seismographs, or the receivers, record the waves of elastic disturbance, or radio waves, that are radiated from the earthquake source, or the broadcasting station. Magnitude can be compared to the power output in kilowatts of a broadcasting station. Local intensity on the Mercalli scale is then comparable to the signal strength on a receiver at a given locality; in effect, the quality of the signal. Intensity, like signal strength, will generally fall off with distance from the source, although it also depends on the local conditions and the pathway from the source to the point."

Two fundamentally different but equally important types of scales are commonly used by seismologists to describe earthquakes. The original force or energy of an earthquake is measured on a magnitude scale, while the intensity of shaking occurring at any given point on the Earth's surface is measured on an intensity scale.

For a complete list of seismic scales, see Scales.

Seismic intensity scales

The first intensity classification was devised by Domenico Pignataro in 1780s. Advancements were later made by P.N.G. Egen in 1828 and Robert Mallet in 1850s. The first widely accepted intensity scale, the Rossi-Forel scale, was introduced in the late 1800s. Since then numerous intensity scales have been developed and are used in different parts of the world: the scale currently used in the United States is the Modified Mercalli scale (MM), while the European Macroseismic Scale is used in Europe, the Shindo scale is used in Japan, and the MSK-64 scale is used in India, Israel, Russia and throughout the CIS. Most of these scales have twelve degrees of intensity, which are roughly equivalent to one another in values but vary in the degree of sophistication employed in their formulation.

Magnitude scales

The first attempt to qualitatively define a single, absolute value to describe the size of earthquakes was the magnitude scale (the name being taking from similarly formulated scales used to represent the brightness of stars).

The Richter scale. In the 1930s, California seismologist Charles F. Richter devised a simple numerical scale (later called magnitude) to describe the relative sizes of earthquakes in Southern California. The Richter scale, also known as the Richter Magnitude or Local Magnitude (ML) scale, is a quantitative logarithmic scale. It is obtained by measuring the maximum amplitude of a recording on a Wood-Anderson torsion seismometer (or one calibrated to it) at a distance of 600 km from the earthquake. Other more recent magnitude measurements include: body wave magnitude (mb), surface wave magnitude (Ms), and duration magnitude (MD). Each of these is scaled to give values similar to those given by the Richter scale; but because each is based on a measurement of one part of the seismogram, they do not measure the overall power of the source and can be negatively affected by saturation at higher magnitude values—meaning that they fail to report higher magnitude values for larger events. Further, since these scales too are empirical, they provide no values that are meaningful from a physics perspective. This does not mean, though, that they are useless: They are because they can be rapidly calculated, catalogues of them dating back many years are available, and the public is familiar with them.

The moment-magnitude scale. Because of the limitations of the magnitude scales, a new, more uniformly applicable extension of them, known as moment magnitude, or MW, was developed. In particular, for very large earthquakes moment magnitude gives the most reliable estimate of earthquake size. This is because seismic moment is derived from the concept of moment in physics and therefore provides clues to the physical size of an earthquake—the size of fault rupture and accompanying displacement and length of slippage—as of as well as the amount of energy released. So while seismic moment, too, is calculated from seismograms, it can also be obtained by working backwards from geologic estimates of the size of the fault rupture and displacement. The values of moments for different earthquakes range over several orders of magnitude, and because they are not influenced by variables such as local circumstances, the results obtained make it easy to objectively compare the sizes of different earthquakes. These characteristics, plus the seismic moment's immunity to saturation at higher magnitudes and compatibility with other magnitude scales, led Tom Hanks and Hiroo Kanamori to introduce in 1979 the moment magnitude (MW) scale for representing the absolute size of earthquakes.

Frequency of occurrence

See Size and frequency of occurrence below.

Seismic maps

An isoseismal map created by the Pacific Northwest Seismograph Network showing the instrument-recorded intensities of the Nisqually earthquake of February 28 2001.
File:Nisqually Community Internet Intensity Map for the Nisqually Earthquake FEB 2281854 ciim.gif
A Community Internet Intensity Map generated by the USGS showing the intensity of shaking felt by humans during the Nisqually earthquake; locality divisions are by ZIP Code.

To show the extent of various levels of seismic effects within a particular locality, seismologists compile special maps called isoseismal maps. An isoseismal map uses contours to outline areas of equal value in terms of ground shaking intensity, ground surface liquefaction, shaking amplification, or other seismic effects. Typically, these maps are created by combining historical instrument-recorded data with responses to postal questionnaires that are sent to each post office near the earthquake and to a sparser sample of post offices with increasing distance from the earthquake. This way of preparing a seismic hazard map can take months to complete. In contrast to the old method, a newer method of information collection takes advantage of the Internet to generate initial hazard maps almost instantly. Data are received through a questionnaire on the Internet answered by people who actually experienced the earthquake, reducing the process of preparing and distributing a map for a particular earthquake from months to minutes.

Seismic hazard maps have many applications. They are used by insurance companies to set insurance rates for properties located in earthquake-risky areas, by civil engineers to estimate the stability of hillsides, by organizations responsible for the safety of nuclear waste disposal facilities, and also by building codes developers as the basis of design requirements.

In building codes, the shaking-hazard maps are converted into seismic zone maps, which are used for seismic analysis of structural components of buildings. The seismic zone maps depict seismic hazards as zones of different risk levels. Such zones are typically designated as Seismic Zone 0, Seismic Zone 1, Seismic Zone 2 and so on. The seismic zone maps usually show the severity of expected earthquake shaking for a particular level of probability, such as the levels of shaking that have a 1-in-10 chance of being exceeded in a 50-year period. Buildings and other structures must be designed with adequate strength to withstand the effects of probable seismic ground motions within the Seismic Zone where the building or structure is being constructed.

Size and frequency of occurrence

Small earthquakes occur every day all around the world, and often multiple times a day in places like California and Alaska in the U.S., as well as Indonesia and Japan on the other side of the Pacific.[1] Large earthquakes occur less frequently, the relationship being exponential; namely, roughly ten times as many earthquakes larger than magnitude 4 occur in a particular time period than earthquakes larger than magnitude 5. For example, it has been calculated that the average recurrence for the United Kingdom can be described as follows:

  • an earthquake of 3.7 or larger every year
  • an earthquake of 4.7 or larger every 10 years
  • an earthquake of 5.6 or larger every 100 years.

Most of the world's earthquakes (90%, and 81% of the largest) take place in the 40,000 km-long, horseshoe-shaped zone called the circum-Pacific seismic belt, also known as the Pacific Ring of Fire, which for the most part bounds the Pacific Plate.[2][3] Massive earthquakes tend to occur along other plate boundaries, too, such as along the Himalaya Mountains.

Preparation for earthquakes

Specific fault articles

Specific earthquake articles

Pre-20th Century

20th Century

21st Century

See also

Look up earthquake in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Earthquake.

Educational

Seismological data centers

Central and South America

Europe

United States

Seismic scales


Scientific information

Miscellaneous

References

Hiroo Kanamori, Emily E. Brodsky (April 2001). "The Physics of Earthquakes". Physics Today.

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