Navigate to the following site: U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Map. (2016). R

Question

Navigate to the following site: U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Map. (2016). Retrieved fromhttp://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/Zoom out to see all the earthquakes that have happened worldwide today. List the most recent earthquake and its magnitude. How many earthquakes have happened in the last day? Why do so many occur near plate boundaries (red lines on map)?

Look at the following map of the world where triangles represent active volcanoes:NOVA: Teacher's Images. (2015). Retrieved fromhttp://www-tc.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/education/activities/images/2515_vesuvius_map2.gif Why do so many occur near plate boundaries (yellow lines on map)?

Pick one active volcano or earthquake from around the globe or a historical geological event and explain the following

What plates or hot spots it is associated with.

How the plates or hot spots are causing/caused the volcanic event/earthquake.

How energy from deep within the earth is/was transferred to and released during the volcanic event/earthquake.

If Alfred Wegener were alive today, and had access to the technology and data that exists today, share a form of evidence that he could have added to his hypothesis or would have changed his hypothesis. Try to share a different form of evidence from those shared by your classmates and/or add to their posts by describing how the evidence is collected, how the technology works to collect the data, or how this technology/evidence has been used in other applications.

Explanation / Answer

The most recent earthquake was at NNW Truckee, California. The magnitude of the quake was 2.5 in Richter scale (mnior earthquake). In the last day, there were 37 earthquakes around the world.

The reason why the quakes occur in plate boundaries is that, it is the weak spots around the world where the rocks can move relative to each other. These movements causes stress which build up for years until at one point where it gets released causing an earthquake.

The volcanoes mostly occur in plate boundaries (to be precise mid oceanic ridges and subduction zones), in mid oceanic ridges, when they diverge, the overladen stress on the rocks below is reduced and hence, melting takes place due to the lowering of the melting point. In subduction zone, the subducting plate goes under the over riding plate and gets melted by partial melting where buoyancy takes the moten magma to the surface to form volcanoes.

For the next part of the question, let us take the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthuake and Tsunami

The plates involved during the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake are the Indo Australian Plate and Eurasian Plate.

In this example, the Indo Australian plate, being dense subducted into the Eurasian Plate. Stress for millions of years was being built along a 100 km stretch of the boundary and on 26th December 2004, the stress was released and the entire 100km stetch was uplifted underwater and causing a mega tsunami.

Alfred Wegner (father of the continental drift) would be surprised to know about the technological usage to prove his hypothesis if he was alive today. One of the evidences which were used were the fossils, if today's GPS technolgy was available to him, the hypothesis would've been proved without much exploration. The GPS would send the movement data with pinpoint accuracy and can reveal the plate's movement and speed !!

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