Every day we detect 55 earthquakes on average, but one thing are earthquakes monitored and followed by the global network and another are microseisms: there the figure rises to 1,300 a day, according to data from the American National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC). It is totally and absolutely normal: the Earth is a dynamic system in constant reconfiguration where the movement of the tectonic plates releases large amounts of energy that seismography is responsible for recording. And thank goodness: beyond the impact and catastrophe of the largest earthquakes, these enormous databases are essential to predict them.
But databases are unfriendly, so the EarthScope Consortium integrated into IRIS Data Services has developed the Interactive Earthquake Browsera seismic visualization tool that allows you to explore more than 5.4 million earthquakes on an interactive global map in Google Maps. The data comes precisely from the catalog of the USGS National Earthquake Information Center, the highest authority on the subject.
The world map of earthquakes. The map shows complete global seismicity from 1970 to the present with dots. Each point represents an earthquake, and its position, size and color serve to qualitatively identify its geographical location, its magnitude and its depth of focus. The view can be overlaid with tectonic plate boundaries, making the map a direct tool for reading the internal structure of the Earth. This format allows you to identify at a glance the areas of greatest seismic activity and danger, such as the Pacific Ring of Fire or the oceanic ridges.
The world map of earthquakes. SAGE
How to use it. The points are just the beginning. In addition to being able to change the view from map to satellite format or zoom in on a specific area, it is possible to activate the 3D view, view animations or export the data directly to Excel or CSV to work with them. You can even change the data source to MIXED, which incorporates records from the International Seismological Center and expands coverage of small events outside of North America, although with less reliability in location. The most interesting thing is the filters that appear in the right column, which allows you to choose how many earthquakes to show in the window, select time intervals, magnitude and depth.
The map of earthquakes in the Iberian Peninsula
Some seismically hot areas. The Pacific Ring of Fire concentrates approximately 90% of all global seismicity and is the most visible region on the map: it includes the western coasts of America, the Aleutian arc, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia and New Zealand and has earthquakes of all colors. The largest earthquake ever recorded, the Valdivia from 1960 with a 9.5, it occurred precisely there, in the subduction zone of the Nazca Plate under the South American Plate.
It is followed by the Alpine-Himalayan arc, whose concentration of seismic activity on the planet is explained by the continental collision between the Eurasian, African and Indo-Australian plates. In this case, earthquakes rarely exceed 300 kilometers in depth, but they can be devastating due to their proximity to large population centers. The East African rift system is fascinating: it is an area where a continental plate is actively breaking up, with diffuse seismicity that marks the future boundary between two new plates.
Why it is important. Visualizing global seismicity as a whole allows us to quickly recognize the boundaries between tectonic plates, the areas of greatest activity and the deep structures of the planet, something that normally escapes our eyes. This capability is essential for both research and seismic risk assessment in densely populated regions.
For science, the option of filtering by depth is especially valuable as superficial, intermediate and deep earthquakes respond to different physical mechanisms and are located in very different geological contexts. Being able to separate and compare these groups facilitates the interpretation of data compared to a statistical analysis of the databases.
In Xataka | People didn’t take drills seriously, so Japan found something much more effective: drills in video games
In Xataka | There are scientists deliberately causing earthquakes in the Alps and they have a good reason for it
Cover | IRIS
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings