Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Do earth quakes occur around the coastlines of all oceans?
Earthquakes occur most everywhere, but they are of such insignificant magnitude that most people don't know about them. The earthquakes you are probably asking about though do not occur on all coastlines. They occur at convergent plate boundaries (look up plate tectonics). In the Americas, this is all along the west coast (and it wraps up past Alaska and into the Siberian coasts). The earthquakes occur here because the oceanic plates are subducting (being pushed underneath of) the less-dense continental plates. This builds up an enormous amount of friction and pressure which eventually becomes too much and the plates will release that energy by breaking free and sliding relative to each other. This is what causes the seismic waves that propagate to the surface and are felt as an earthquake. To know all of the coasts, search for convergent plate margins, or just look up seismic activity on the USGS website and note where most of the quakes are happening.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment