Seismology: Earth's Tectonic Phenomenon Patterns

For my “specialty,” I had seismology. Seismology is the branch of geology that studies earthquake behaviors. In this case, I had to deal with earthquakes and the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates. My plan was to look at where the map had different elevation patterns, so I can differentiate them into groups. I found 3 different categories, and identified them as Type 1, Type 2, and Type 3. My first category is a blue (X) to represent the boundaries outside the Pacific, South American, and Pacific Plate. I noticed that type 1 was found deeper as further into the plate. My second category is a red star to symbolize frontiers around the North American Plate and the outskirts of the African Plate. I classified the pattern as type 3, showing sporadic …show more content…
My group and I worked together well to collect the different data we received from the previous map. We were at a disadvantage because another group member and myself were assigned the same specialty; Seismology. Our first step was to look at the areas where the map is constant to make a grouping for sections on the plate boundary. Based on this method, we discovered four different type of formations from our legend. Our first type is seismology; which appears further from the plate. The second type, is volcanology, which presented as clusters. The third type; geography, starts deep below sea level then gradually rises. The last type is Geochronology, found on the Nazca plate; the closer you get to the land, the older the rock formation. Since the Nazca plate is a fairly simple plate, it was easy to make four different categories to combine our …show more content…
Which is an oceanic tectonic plate located in the eastern Pacific Ocean basin right off the west coast of South America. The never-ending subduction found along the Peru- Chile Trench in the Nazca Plate under the South American Plate is the sole reason for the Andean orogeny. The Nazca Plate is surrounded by the Pacific Plate on the west, and on the south the Antarctic Plate through the East Pacific Rise and the Chile Rise. Due to the movement of the Nazca plate over numerous hotspots, volcanic islands have been created sub-ducted under South America. Shallow earthquakes are caused by faults and the movements of the continental plates, these earthquakes have their focus near the surface of the earth. Because these types of earthquakes are of a large spread, they cause greater damage at the earth’s crust. Roughly 75% of the world’s energy released from earthquakes are from shallow ones. As for deep earthquakes, they occur in sub-ducting oceanic plates, moving beneath the continental plates. They happen with larger magnitudes, as a ton of energy is released by the collision of the plates. Geologists often use triangulation as a way of finding the locations of Earthquakes. Triangulation is a way of determining something 's location using different locations. The four different types of earthquake waves are P and S wave, Surface wave and the Rayleigh wave. The faster of the waves is known as the primary wave (P