01:460:201 Earthquakes and Volcanoes: Spring 2022

Homework – Earthquake I

Submit the homework no later than 11:59 pm EST on Monday, April 11th. The
total value of this homework is 12.5 points of your final grade. Please make sure
all required items are present.

BACKGROUND
A list of earthquakes that took place, including their origin times, locations and
source parameters, is called a catalog. Such catalogs are compiled by various
organizations whose task is to monitor seismic activity. We will work with US
National Earthquake Information Center catalog. It is compiled by the US agency
but covers the earthquake activity worldwide. The search function that you will
need to use is at this link:
https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/search/

Else go to http://earthquake.usgs.gov, click “latest earthquakes”, then click the

“gear” icon in the top right, and finally the blue button labeled “search earthquake
catalog”.
 Task I: Where are big earthquakes on Earth? (5 points)

The website requires you to input a few bits of information, like the start and the end
times of the interval to search, a range of magnitude values, a range of depths etc.

1) Pick a time interval to work with. A good one would be your own lifetime. You
could also choose any two consecutive decades covered by the database; any interval
over ~15 years will do.

2) Find ~20 largest earthquakes that took place during your time interval, and have
hypocenters no deeper than 50 km.

 In the “Basic Options” section of the search window, check “Custom” option and
enter your selected time interval and a minimum magnitude of 6.5 (if too small,
the excessive number of events will crash the service.) Leave the “world” option
checked under “Geographic Region”.

 In the “Advanced Options”, enter the depth range: 0 for the minimum, and 50 for
the maximum.

 Under “Output Options”, select “Map & List”, ordered by “Magnitude – Largest
First”.

Allow a moment for the earthquakes to load. There will be a ridiculous number of
earthquakes in your time interval. Adjust the minimum magnitude until your list is about
20 events long; the number of events in the search is shown in the upper left corner of the
search screen.

3) Download the list. Once you found the magnitude range that yields about 20
earthquakes, expand the menu under “Click for more information” and click on the
“Download” button. You will see a number of live links for downloading the results
of your search. Save two files by clicking;

 “CSV” (to be opened in Excel)

 “KML – color by depth” (to be opened in Google Earth)

NOTE to Windows users: you may have to rename files that are saved; they may come
without an extension. Simply add .csv or .kml to the filename you get from the website,
and all will be well.
Open the KML file in Google Earth. You should get an image that looks like the
example below.

4) Decide what type of plate boundary produces the largest earthquakes.

 It may help to load the outlines of tectonic plates from the file in Canvas plate-
boudaries.kmz). See where your earthquakes end up and decide what plate
boundary type is associated with most of them.

 Make one or two images showing a whole-earth view (you may have to rotate the
globe to see all earthquake). To save images, simply do a screenshot, or follow
File  Save  Save Image in Google Earth.
The product of task 1 should contain:

1) a list of the largest earthquakes, with their times, latitudes and longitudes, depths,
magnitudes, and places (to insert the table in the Word document, you can open the CSV
files in Excel and copy + paste the columns you need, or take a screenshot) [2 pt
 2) one or two map images [1 pt]

3) the name of the plate boundary type [2 pt]

Based on where my earthquakes end up, I decided that the transform plate boundary type
produces the largest earthquakes as it is associated with most of the largest ones. I would also
like to mention that I noticed that the convergent plate boundary is also associated with some
large earthquakes, which have a magnitude of 8.8, 8.4 and 8.3.
 Task II: Why do big earthquakes take place where they do? (7.5 points)

Write a concise (150-word max) explanation of why most large earthquakes happen
where you see them on the map.

HINT: It would be helpful to review sections of the class that deal with earthquake size –
how it is measured, what makes earthquakes bigger or smaller.

Magnitude which measures earthquakes is connected to the area of the fault on which
earthquakes happen and depend on loss of energy that causes seismic waves to shake the
ground. Earthquakes are caused when underground rock breaks and there is a fast motion
along the fault. The larger the fault area is the larger the earthquake. The size depends on
how long the slip on the fault is, the shear modulus and area of the fault that moved.
Properties of the rocks in the Earth’s crust of a region determine how fast the shaking
released at the source will decrease with distance. The magnitude is based on the size of
the ground motion caused by a wave from an earthquake. Earthquakes happen where they
happen based on where the shaking and slipping of the crust happened. The stronger the
shaking is and the bigger the surface movement is, the larger the earthquakes are.

Lastly, compile all required items in a single Word or PDF document.