Being the largest volcano on Earth, Mauna Loa is 4 km above sea level, its mass 8 km added to the long submarine planks that dig into the sea floor another 5 km. This gigantic volcano takes up half the island of Hawaii, the summit in 17 km (56,000 ft) above its base. The volcano adds to 85 percent of the other islands combined. Being one of Earth’s most frequent erupting volcanoes, erupting thirty three times since its first ever documentation in 1843. The last eruption happened in 1984, and we’re certain the volcano will erupt again, but for now we monitor Mauna Loa for any indication of its next eruption.
Cities are located near dangerous earthquake zones all throughout the country, from the most infamous on the West Coast to potential time bombs in the Midwest and even on the Eastern Seaboard. Stretching from northern Vancouver Island in Canada to northern California is the Cascadia subduction zone, where one giant plate of the Earth's surface is diving deep beneath another one. “The very largest earthquakes all occur on subduction zones”, said seismologist Geoffrey Abers at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University in New York. "These are also the faults that make very large tsunamis that propagate across ocean basins to cause a lot of damage.” This means that our home state, Washington, falls into that “at risk” category. The earthquake threat in Washington is
(Some geologists argue that this portion of the Eurasian Plate is actually a fragment of the North American Plate called the Okhotsk microplate.) A part of the subduction zone measuring approximately 190 miles (300 km) long by 95 miles (150 km) wide lurched as much as 164 feet (50 metres) to the east-southeast and thrust upward about 33 feet (10 metres). (“Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of 2011, 1”) A series of extremely destructive tsunami waves followed the 9.0 earthquake along with the dozens of foreshocks and aftershocks that came with it. The city of Sendai, its surrounding area and airport were pounded by a wave
Ricardo Perez Historical Processes of Puerto Rico San Fermin Earthquake of 1918 The geological position of Puerto Rico raises a concern for earthquakes in the modern day. The island is located very close to the junction of the Caribbean and North American tectonic plates. A combination of seismic and volcanic activity created the Caribbean islands as we know them today. All of the Caribbean islands, with the exception of Barbados, were created from the fierce volcanic activity of the millions of years ago during the Antillean Revolution. Violent movements of the plates in the Post-Glacial era created the Puerto Rican Trench, nearly 24,000 feet deep, which is the deepest point in the Atlantic Ocean.
Maverick’s Wave The Mavericks is one of the most world renowned big wave break in Northern California. It is located about half a mile from the shore of Pillar Point Harbor just north of Half Moon Bay, California. The area is a shallow near shore reef in the locality of the San Gregorio fault, a major active fault within the San Andreas fault system. Motion on the fault zone has uplifted and deformed the rocks in the area near Mavericks into the S and J shaped folds we see on the seafloor (NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries). It contains the biggest waves that attract many surfers around the world.
The 1993 southwest-off Hokkaido earthquake occurred at 22:17 on 12 July 1993 in the Sea of Japan near the island of Hokkaido. It had a magnitude of 7.7 on the moment magnitude scale (newer version of the Richter scale) and a maximum felt intensity of VIII on the Mercalli intensity scale. It triggered a major tsunami that caused deaths on Hokkaidō and in southeastern Russia, with a total of 239 fatalities recorded. The island of Okushiri was hardest hit, with 165 casualties from the earthquake, the tsunami and a large landslide. The earthquake occurred in the backarc region of the convergent boundary where the Pacific Plate subducted beneath the Eurasian Plate.
The crust is the Earth's coldest layer. There are two parts to it -- the OceanicCrust and the Continental Crust.The Oceanic Crust The Oceanic Crust lies beneath the oceans. It is between 4 to 7 miles (6 - 11km) thick. Its rocks are heavy and young, not more than 200 million years old. They are mostly basalt, which has a gritty volcanic structure.
The shifting of the earth’s plates in the Indian Ocean on Dec. 26, 2004 caused a rupture more than 600 miles long, displacing the seafloor above the rupture by perhaps 10 yards horizontally and several yards vertically. As a result, trillions of tons of rock were moved along hundreds of miles and caused the planet to shudder with the largest magnitude earthquake in 40 years. Within hours of the earthquake, killer waves radiating from the epicentre slammed into the coastline of 11 Indian Ocean countries, damaging countries from east Africa to Thailand. A tsunami is a series of waves, and the first wave may not be the most dangerous. A tsunami “wave train” may come as surges five minutes to an hour apart.
Lake Nyos is a crater lake located in northwestern Cameroon, about 315 kilometers from Yaoundé, Cameroon’s capital city. Lake Nyos, which is over 200 meters deep and occupies an area of about 1.5 square kilometers, is situated within the Oku Volcanic Field, a group of volcanoes on the Cameroon Volcanic Line. On August 21, 1986 a disaster struck the villages of Nyos, Kam, Cha, and Subum. Almost 1,700 people, along with thousands of cattle and virtually all wildlife, were found dead, with no obvious cause of death. Scientists from around the world flocked to the valley villages to uncover the mystery behind the massive loss of life, both human and other.
The S-waves shake the ground making earthquakes so damaging and the reactor core is shut down (Kerger, 2011. Four miles below the surface the earth is altering caught in a gigantic slow motion collision. Japan lies at the Pacific Plate and rams into the Eurasian Plate causing the Eurasian Plate to shift and cave under. Eventually the plates snap causing an earthquake. This earthquake lasted an impressive five minutes and measured at a magnitude 9.0.