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: 3rd Update
After some debate online, I decided to put this quick map together. Clicking on the epicenters in google earth or on the USGS earthquakes page, one can easily determine that there were aftershocks from the 2015.04.25 Mw 7.8 earthquake in…
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…
Earthquake offshore of Bougainville!
Two days after the Mw 7.5 subduction zone earthquake along the New Britain trench, we get a swarm of seismicity further south offshore of Bougainville! (near the Solomon Islands) The largest earthquake has a magnitude M = 7.1. Here is…
New Britain Strikes Again!
In the past week, there has been a series of earthquakes in the New Britain trench. The largest quakes are M = 6.7 & 6.8. Now we might call those foreshocks to today’s M = 7.5 earthquake de Cinco de…
Small Earthquake in San Francisco Region
There was a M 3.6 earthquake near Concord, CA. This earthquake was felt widely across the S.F. Bay area. The two earthquakes plotted in the map below are both just southeast of the 2014 August Napa earthquake. The Napa earthquake,…
New Britain stays seismically active
We just had five M~5 earthquakes along the New Britain trench. The New Britain trench is formed by the subduction of the oceanic Solomon Sea microplate beneath the oceanic South Bismark microplate to the north. Here are the USGS web…