Early this morning (luckily I was not awake at the time) we had a really deep (~677km) M = 7.8 extensional earthquake along the Bonin Trench in the western Pacific. Here is the USGS page for this earthquake. Here is…
Mid Atlantic Ridge Plate Boundary
In the past week, there have been a few earthquakes along the Mid Atlantic Ridge (MAR) and some associated fracture zones. The Mid Atlantic Ridge is a divergent plate boundary. As the plates move apart, the asthenosphere is decompressed and…
Santa Cruz (western Pacific) Earthquake Swarm!
The past couple of days have brought us a series of large magnitude strike-slip earthquakes along a plate boundary between the Solomon Trench and the New Hebrides Trench. I posted about the first earthquake here and here. This swarm of…
Earthquake in the Solomon Islands!
Following yesterday’s seismic swarm along the plate boundary that connects the Solomon Trench with the New Hebrides Trench, we have a M = 6.0 compressional earthquake in the Solomons. Today’s earthquake is in the region of the possibly subduction zone…
Santa Cruz Islands Earthquake: Update #1
The USGS has presented their moment tensor solution for this M = 6.8 earthquake and it indeed appears to be a strike-slip type of an earthquake, supporting our interpretation that this is a transform plate boundary. Here was my first…
Santa Cruz Islands Earthquake!
We just had an earthquake in the Santa Cruz Islands region. Earliest reports has the magnitude at M = 6.9, with a depth of 19.9 km. This earthquake appears to align with a transform boundary that connects the New Hebrides…
Nepal (Gorkha) Earthquake: USGS Slip Models
The USGS has processed an inversion of the seismic data for a slip model for the Mw 7.3 earthquake. I have rubbersheeted their fault plane solution, as well as the solution for the Mw 7.8 earthquake for comparison. Please find…
Large Aftershock in Nepal: 2nd Update
Well, there have been a few more aftershocks over night… Here is my first post about these aftershocks (I provide more links to the USGS web sites). Plus, the USGS has inverted the seismic data to estimate a fault plane…
Large Aftershock in Nepal: 1st Update
The first moment tensor has been calculated and I have plotted this Mww MT on the map. There has also been a small M 5.6 aftershock to this M 7.3 aftershock. Here is the map, that also includes moment tensors…
Large Aftershock in Nepal
We just had a large aftershock to the east of the mainshock. The PAGER estimates are currently suggesting that there will be additional casualties. Regions that were destabilized (hillsides, buildings, etc.) from the main shock, but were not in areas…