Category Archives: pacific

2018/05/04
11:06 PM
by: Jay Patton

Earthquake-Volcanic Eruption Report: Hawai’i

My USGS Earthquake Notification Service email inbox has been going on overtime. There has been a swarm of earthquakes on the southeastern part of the big island, with USGS volcanologists hypothesizing about magma movement and suggesting that an eruption may … Continue reading →

Posted in earthquake, education, geology, pacific, plate tectonics, volcanoes

2018/04/07
11:53 AM
by: Jay Patton

Earthquake Report: Channel Islands Update #1

Well well. There was lots of interest in this M 5.3 earthquake offshore of Ventura/Los Angeles, justifiably so. Southern California is earthquake country. Here is an update. There was lots of information that I was trying to incorporate and I … Continue reading →

Posted in collision, earthquake, education, geology, los angeles, pacific, plate tectonics, San Andreas, strike-slip

2018/04/05
4:33 PM
by: Jay Patton

Earthquake Report: Channel Islands

I was finally getting around to writing a report for the deep Bolivia earthquake (Bolivia report here), when a M 5.3 earthquake struck offshore of the channel islands (south of Santa Cruz Island, west of Los Angeles). As is typical … Continue reading →

Posted in earthquake, education, geology, los angeles, pacific, plate tectonics, San Andreas, strike-slip, Transform

2018/04/05
12:54 PM
by: Jay Patton

Earthquake Report: Bolivia!

A couple days ago there was a deep focus earthquake in the downgoing Nazca plate deep beneath Bolivia. This earthquake has an hypocentral depth of 562 km (~350 miles). We are still unsure what causes an earthquake at such great … Continue reading →

Posted in earthquake, education, geology, pacific, plate tectonics, subduction

2018/03/26
9:13 AM
by: Jay Patton

Earthquake Report: New Britain

The New Britain region is one of the more active regions in the world. See a list of earthquake reports for this region at the bottom of this page, above the reference list. Today’s M 6.6 earthquake happened close in … Continue reading →

Posted in earthquake, education, geology, pacific, plate tectonics, subduction

2018/03/08
12:43 PM
by: Jay Patton

Earthquake Report: New Ireland!

We had an M 6.8 earthquake near a transform micro-plate boundary fault system north of New Ireland, Papua New Guinea today. Here is the USGS website for this earthquake. The main transform fault (Weitin fault) is ~40 km to the … Continue reading →

Posted in earthquake, education, geology, pacific, plate tectonics, strike-slip, Transform

2018/02/26
1:21 PM
by: Jay Patton

Earthquake Report: Papua New Guinea: Update #1

The aftershocks are still coming in! We can use these aftershocks to define where the fault may have slipped during this M 7.5 earthquake. As I mentioned yesterday in the original report, it turns out the fault dimension matches pretty … Continue reading →

Posted in collision, earthquake, education, geology, pacific, plate tectonics

2018/02/25
5:55 PM
by: Jay Patton

Earthquake Report: Papua New Guinea

This morning (local time in California) there was an earthquake in Papua New Guinea with, unfortunately, a high likelihood of having a good number of casualties. I was working on a project, so could not immediately begin work on this … Continue reading →

Posted in collision, earthquake, education, geology, Indonesia, pacific, plate tectonics

2018/02/16
7:56 PM
by: Jay Patton

Earthquake Report: ¡Oaxaca, Mexico!

There was just now an earthquake in Oaxaca, Mexico between the other large earthquakes from last 2017.09.08 (M 8.1) and 2017.09.08 (M 7.1). There has already been a M 5.8 aftershock.Here is the USGS website for today’s M 7.2 earthquake. … Continue reading →

Posted in earthquake, education, geology, pacific, plate tectonics, subduction

2018/02/12
12:43 PM
by: Jay Patton

Earthquake Report: 1960 Valdivia, Chile M 9.5

In commemoration of the #EarthquakeCup, I have put together a summary for the largest instrumentally recorded earthquake, the M 9.5 1960 Valdivia, Chile Earthquake. The Peru-Chile trench is quite active and generated Great earthquakes (M>8) in 1985, 2010, 2014, and … Continue reading →

Posted in earthquake, education, geology, pacific, plate tectonics, subduction