Category Archives: focal mechanisms

Earthquake location matters, part eleventy

It’s been a month since the Tohuku earthquake and tsunami rattled then swamped northern Honshu, and Japan continues to be rattled by sizeable aftershocks. A magnitude 7.1 shock last Thursday initially set off further tsunami alerts but the rupture turned … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, focal mechanisms, geohazards, society

Magnitude 8.9 (or 9.0, or 9.1!) Earthquake off the coast of Japan

Around 3pm local time yesterday, there was a massive earthquake about 100 miles off the east coast of northern Honshu Island, Japan. Initially calculated to be a magnitude 8.9, it has since been upgraded: the current CMT solution at the … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, focal mechanisms, geohazards, tectonics

Magnitude 6.3 earthquake rocks Christchurch

[Note: see the bottom of this post for the latest updates and links - last update 26th February]. A few hours ago, Christchurch, the largest city on the South Island of New Zealand, was once again shaken by a large … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, focal mechanisms, geohazards, society, tectonics

Friday focal mechanisms: Chile’s persistent seismic gap

The magnitude 8.8 earthquake that shook Chile in February 2010 occurred within a seismic gap – but new research suggests that it did not fill it. Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, focal mechanisms, geohazards

Friday Focal Mechanism: Magnitude 7.2, Western Pakistan

Why are we getting an extensional earthquake at a convergent plate boundary? Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, focal mechanisms, geophysics, tectonics

Tectonics of the M7 earthquake near Christchurch, New Zealand

This post was written in response to the Darfield earthquake in September 2010. The most recent seismic activity is discussed here. [Updated 8th September 1200 GMT – see bottom of post. And check out the PodClast discussion of this earthquake, … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, focal mechanisms, geohazards, tectonics

Friday Focal Mechanism

The earthquake that particularly caught my eye this week occurred on Tuesday off the coast of Mexico: This focal mechanism is pure strike-slip: that is, it is the result of two sides of a fault moving laterally past each other, … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, focal mechanisms, tectonics

Friday(ish) Focal Mechanisms: Samoa’s hidden rupture

How what we thought was one great earthquake turned out to be two, or possibly even three, at the same time. Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, focal mechanisms

Friday Focal Mechanisms: Haiti, revisited

The new research that acquits the Enriquillo Fault of causing the Haiti earthquake. Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, focal mechanisms, geohazards, structures, tectonics

Friday-ish focal mechanisms

A brief note on Thursday’s earthquake in Wyoming Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, focal mechanisms, geohazards