Category Archives: earthquakes

Echoes of Wenchuan: magnitude 6.6 earthquake shakes Sichuan province in west China.

On Saturday morning local time (Friday evening for us in the USA), a magnitude 6.6 earthquake shook up Sichuan province in western China, about 35 km north of the closest city, Ya’an, and 115km west of the provincial capital Chengdu. … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, focal mechanisms, tectonics

A week of big earthquakes in Iran

Squashed and squeezed between the Eurasian continent to the north and the northward-moving Arabian plate to the south, it is no surprise that Iran is a seismically active country, and in the past week it has been living up to … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, focal mechanisms, tectonics

We have a seismometer in our basement…

Or, more accurately, my department does. And it rather handily picked up last week’s magnitude 8 earthquake near the Santa Cruz Islands (subject of the latest Friday Focal Mechanisms), all the way over in the southwest Pacific. Here’s the seismogram: … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, geophysics

Friday Focal Mechanisms: before and after the M8 Santa Cruz Islands quake

On Tuesday night American time (Wednesday lunchtime local time), a magnitude 8 earthquake occurred near the Santa Cruz Islands, a set of small islands east of the Solomon Islands. In this region, the Australian plate is subducting to the north-east … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, focal mechanisms, tectonics

Friday Focal Mechanism: the Himalayas’ long tectonic shadow

It wasn’t the biggest seismic event of the week, but this shallow (15 km depth) magnitude 6.0 that shook the remote southeast corner of Kazakstan on Monday still caught my attention. Located within the Tian Shan mountains, this earthquake is … Continue reading

Categories: earthquakes, focal mechanisms, tectonics