Here I summarize Earth’s significant seismicity for 2017. I limit this summary to earthquakes with magnitude greater than or equal to M 6.5. There were only 6 earthquakes greater than or equal to M 7.0 in 2017 (compared to 17…
Earthquake Report: Iran
A couple weeks following the earthquake in eastern Iraq, there was a sequence of earthquakes in central eastern Iran. These earthquakes are too distant to be related. The Iranian sequence includes a M 6.1 foreshock on 2017.12.01 and two M…
Earthquake Report: Iraq
A month and a half ago, I was attending the PATA conference and an earthquake hit Iran and Iraq the night before our first field trip. Thus, I did not have the time to address this earthquake at the time.…
Earthquake Report: Java!
This morning (my time) there was a deep earthquake along the subduction zone beneath Java. The M 6.5 earthquake hypocentral depth is deeper than the subduction zone megathrust fault, so it is the downgoing Australia plate (AP). My initial interpretation…
Earthquake Report: Laytonville (northern CA)!
This morning there was a small earthquake in a region of northern California between two major faults that are part of the Pacific-North America plate boundary. The M 4.3 earthquake occurred between the San Andreas fault (SAF) to the west…
Earthquake Report: Caroline Ridge Update #1
Well, there was an earthquake this morning (my time) that may help us select a fault plane solution. Recall that these fault plane solutions (moment tensors and focal mechanisms) have two possible fault planes. We need additional information (like fault…
Earthquake Report: Caroline Ridge
There was an earthquake sequence beginning 2017.12.08 along the northern flank of Caroline Ridge in the western Pacific Ocean, near the intersection of the Mariana and Yap trenches. The two largest earthquakes, M 6.5 and M 6.4, are both strike-slip…
Earthquake Report: Delaware!
Today there was an earthquake in the state of Delaware, a region that does not have many mapped surface faults (I could not find any active faults in a couple hours of lit review). This area also does not have…
Earthquake Report: Loyalty Islands Update #1
I just got back from one of the best conferences that I have ever attended, PATA Days 2017 (Paleoseismology, Active Tectonics, and Archeoseismology). This conference was held in Blenheim, New Zealand and was planned to commemorate the 300 year anniversary…
Earthquake Report: Papua New Guinea!
Well. As I was preparing a job application at the library public wifi (the Airbnb I was staying at did not have wifi in my cabin, nor electricity for that matter), I prepared an interpretive poster for this earthquake. Interestingly,…