Category Archives: earthquakes

Natural disasters may not always hit hardest where you’d expect

For many natural hazards, the actual risk is not purely a function of frequency and magnitude: politics, regulation and psychology are also a large influence on the potential human impact. Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, geohazards, society

The many faces of earthquake triggering

Can large earthquakes beget more large earthquakes? It’s an easy question to ask, but much more difficult to answer. Depending on the distance from, and time since, the initial earthquake, the processes that may result in ‘seismic triggering’ are very … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, geohazards, tectonics

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

How to (and how not to) talk about earthquake hazards in the media

Susan Hough: take a bow. Simon Winchester: don’t. Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, geohazards, public science, ranting

Sendai/Tohoku earthquake round-up

It’s hardly surprising that my browsing this week has been focussed largely on the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan (which is now officially being referred to as the Tohuku earthquake, rather than the Sendai earthquake; I’d complain … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, geohazards, links