Latest Earthquake Report   

Earthquake and its causes

• An earthquake is a series of vibrations on the earth's surface caused by the  generation of  elastic  (seismic) waves due to sudden  rupture  within the earth  during  release of  accumulated  strain  energy.

• Faulting  may be  considered as an immediate  cause of an earthquake.    Due to constant  movement of plates,  deformation is caused which  results  to generations of strain  energy. 

• Indian  plate is moving in  north-north-east  direction  and  colliding  with  Eurasian  plate   along  the  Himalayas.

DEFINITIONS

• EPICENTRE:  It  is  the point on the (free)  surface of the earth vertically  above the  origin    place  (hypocentre)  of an earthquake.   This point  is expressed  by geographical  latitude  and longitude. 

• MAGNITUDE :  It is  a quantity  to   measure the size of an earthquake  in terms of its  energy  and is independent  of the  place of  observation. 

• RICHTER  SCALE :  Magnitude  is measured  on the  basis of  ground  motion  recorded  by an instrument and  applying  standard  correction  for the epicentral  distance from  recording  station. It is  related with the  logarithm  of amount  of energy  released by an  earthquake  and  expressed  in  Richter  Scale. 

• INTENSITY:  It  is the rating  of the effect of an earthquake at a particular   place,   based on the observations of the damaged  areas,   using a descriptive  scale  like  Modified  Mercalli  Scale.

CLASSIFICATION OF EARTHQUAKES

• Slight             :  Magnitude  up to   4.9  on the  Richter  scale

• Moderate        :  Magnitude   5.0   to  6.9

• Great             :  Magnitude  7.0  to  7.9

• Very  great     :  Magnitude  8.0  and  more