March 2018

Strong to great earthquakes (M6.0+)

The Michigan Technological University’s UPSeis website where the discussion is about the science of seismology and earthquakes, classifies Earthquake Magnitude Classes & Scale as follows –

I thought it would be interesting to map the “strong to great earthquakes” since September 2017, which is when our data collection first started.

Up-to-date earthquake data is available from the USGS site (United States Geological Survey). From this data, two visualizations/maps were created.

Earthquake data since September 2017, and with a magnitude greater than M6.0 on the Richter scale, was downloaded and tabulated. From this data, two visualizations/maps were created.

The FIRST is an interactive, but static, map showing earthquakes with a magnitude greater than 4.5 on the Richter scale. Zooming and panning the map shows where earthquakes occurred. Further, hovering over and clicking on earthquake symbols brings up related earthquake information.

This map looks and works better in full screen so please click the icon below the map.

The SECOND map is also an interactive map, but this time animated, and again showing earthquakes with a magnitude greater than 6.0 on the Richter scale.

The timeline at the bottom of this map is animated showing the earthquakes in a time sequence as they happened. This timeline can be paused, and then the time cursor can be moved manually to really see where a particular days earthquakes occurred.

It is intriguing to watch the earthquakes occurring when zoomed in, pausing the animation, and then moving the slider manually.

Have fun playing around with the widgets and exploring the maps.

If you need help: here are some hints for playing around with the maps.