Tectonic Theater Project

Also we will discuss if earthquakes are common in this region. The plate boundary that was associated with the 20 Oct 14 San Gabriel Ecuador earthquake was the Nazac plate (oceanic tectonic plate) and the South American plate forming a convergent boundary (USGS, 2014). This plate boundary can be very active, but since 1900 till 2012 there have been only approximately 50 earthquakes of 5.5 or greater in Ecuador and only two to three…

Thus, volcanoes can be found along tectonic plate boundaries. However, Hawaii is not located at tectonic plate boundaries, but in the north central part of the Pacific plate. As with all tectonic plates, the Pacific plate has a predominant direction of flow as it floats over the viscous mantle of the earth and is moving in a northwesterly direction at a rate of 7…

1 Introduction Since the eruption in 1980, the area around Mount St. Helens has rebounded in ways that were somewhat unexpected, with recovery coming not only from the surrounding area, but from within the barren expanse that remained after the eruption. While not the first eruption overall, this eruption was the first to occur on the U.S mainland in a time when modern scientific monitoring could track the events associated with it. Smaller earthquakes in March of 1980 eventually led to the…

The Cook Islands is a Polynesian country comprising 15 small islands with a total land area of 240 km2 (Table 1), located in the South Pacific Ocean, but its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) covers an ocean area of 1.8 million km2. The country of the Cook Islands consists of two main groups, one in the north and one in the south. The southern group is nine elevated islands mainly of volcanic origin although some are virtually atolls. The majority of the population lives in the southern group (Fig.…

“At 4:53 p.m. on Tuesday, January 12, 2010, Haiti plunged into horror” (Lahens, 2010, p. 9). The earthquake affected three and a half million individuals, left two hundred and twenty thousand people dead, and destroyed four thousand schools (DEC, 2015). It is safe to say that Haiti’s recent history has been dramatically shaped by the 7.0 magnitude earthquake (DEC, 2015) that struck in 2010. Understanding both the gravity of and the world’s response to the 2010 earthquake is essential in…

This caused a chain reaction for other disasters to happen. In 2011, the ground underneath Japan had an earthquake that did not only shake the ground but it shook the future of the country for years to come. Japan sat at the junction of four major tectonic plates. The Philippian plate had been sinking under the Continental plate a few centimeters every year. This is the reason why the area was geologically vulnerable. Because of the threat of earthquakes, the Japanese were prepared for such…

endless destruction. According to the United States Geological Survey, this was the fourth largest earthquake in the world since 1900 (USGS, 2012). Earthquakes are a violent shaking of the ground caused by a rapid release of energy as a result of tectonic plate motion. From an article on Earth Scope, the 2011 Japan earthquake was caused from thrust faulting near the convergent plate boundary between the North American Plate and the Pacific Plate. The lithosphere of the Western Pacific plate…

HSIE Geography Assessment Task 2 By Josh Borro (Mount Vesuvius, Italy) Spatial Distribution of the Disaster: In the year 74 AD, 24th of August, a volcano named Mount Vesuvius erupted and caused mass destruction in Pompeii, Italy during Midday. The eruption lasted for more than 24 hours causing parts of the nearby environment to be negatively affected. According to figure number one, Mt Vesuvius is located in the Metropolitan City of Italy. The location of this particular point is 40.822383…

TWS Forecasting To achieve the objective of TWS forecasting in this thesis, the regions selected for extreme events analysis in section 3.2.6 were used. Correlation was done between area averaged TWS of each region and sea surface temperature indices of major global oceans (Pacific Ocean: from different Niño regions such as Niño 1.2, Niño 3, Niño 3.4 and Niño 4; and Indian Ocean SST, DMI). The Pearson product moment sample coefficient of correlation was used, which is defined as:…

Samoan 2009 tsunami report: What caused the earthquake and tsunami? On Tuesday the 29th of September 2009, a huge tsunami hit Samoa – as well as several other islands – and impacted many, leaving a path of destruction. Tsunamis are big waves that are generated from earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions that occur in the ocean. When the waves move inland they gradually gain height as the ocean gets shallow. So, the speed of the tsunami is related to the depth of the ocean. Tsunamis travel very fast…