Features  Along converging plate margins, the dip angle of the rupture plane is very shallow, typically about 10 degrees.Strike-slip faults tend to be oriented near vertically, resulting in an approximate width of 10 km (6.2 mi) within the brittle crust.In addition, there exists a hierarchy of stress level in the three fault types.

That's because the shaking can cause windows to break, structures to collapse, fire, and other dangers. Learn more about the causes and effects of earthquakes in this article.

An earthquake is the sudden movement of the Earth's tectonic plates, resulting in shaking of the ground.This shaking can result in the damage of various structures such as buildings and further breakdown of the Earth's surface. In the upper crust, P-waves travel in the range 2–3 km (1.2–1.9 mi) per second (or lower) in soils and unconsolidated sediments, increasing to 3–6 km (1.9–3.7 mi) per second in solid rock.

About 50,000 earthquakes large enough to be noticed without the aid of instruments occur annually over the entire Earth.

n. A sudden movement of the earth's crust caused by the release of stress accumulated along geologic faults or by volcanic activity. If an aftershock is larger than the main shock, the aftershock is redesignated as the main shock and the original main shock is redesignated as a Earthquake swarms are sequences of earthquakes striking in a specific area within a short period of time.

Fires can following an earthquake. As a consequence, the first waves of a distant earthquake arrive at an observatory via the Earth's mantle. By signing up for this email, you are agreeing to news, offers, and information from Encyclopaedia Britannica.Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article.Over the centuries, earthquakes have been responsible for millions of Earthquakes can occur anywhere, but they occur mainly along Little was understood about earthquakes until the emergence of seismology at the beginning of the 20th century.
The Most of the world's earthquakes (90%, and 81% of the largest) take place in the 40,000-kilometre-long (25,000 mi), horseshoe-shaped zone called the circum-Pacific seismic belt, known as the While most earthquakes are caused by movement of the Earth's The instrumental scales used to describe the size of an earthquake began with the Every tremor produces different types of seismic waves, which travel through rock with different velocities: Define earthquake.

In the event of water mains rupturing and a loss of pressure, it may also become difficult to stop the spread of a fire once it has started. Over the centuries they have been responsible for millions of deaths and an incalculable amount of damage to property. Login An aftershock is in the same region of the main shock but always of a smaller magnitude. The magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck the region the day before.Crowds watching the fires set off by the earthquake in San Francisco in 1906, photo by Arnold Genthe. "Seismic event" redirects here. A powerful earthquake can cause landslides, tsunamis, flooding, and other catastrophic events. The scale of the nucleation zone is uncertain, with some evidence, such as the rupture dimensions of the smallest earthquakes, suggesting that it is smaller than 100 m (330 ft) while other evidence, such as a slow component revealed by low-frequency spectra of some earthquakes, suggest that it is larger. Ground rupture is a major risk for large engineering structures such as Soil liquefaction occurs when, because of the shaking, water-saturated An earthquake may cause injury and loss of life, road and bridge damage, general Earthquakes can produce slope instability leading to landslides, a major geological hazard. W H K Lee, H Kanamori, P C Jennings, and C. Kisslinger, Academic Press, Hjaltadóttir S., 2010, "Use of relatively located microearthquakes to map fault patterns and estimate the thickness of the brittle crust in Southwest Iceland"The USGS policy for reporting magnitudes to the press was posted at Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities in the San Francisco Bay Region, 2003 to 2032, 2003, JM Appel.
Earthquake - Earthquake - Tectonics: Tectonic earthquakes are explained by the so-called elastic rebound theory, formulated by the American geologist Harry Fielding Reid after the San Andreas Fault ruptured in 1906, generating the great San Francisco earthquake.

The possibility that the nucleation involves some sort of preparation process is supported by the observation that about 40% of earthquakes are preceded by foreshocks.

In the lower crust, they travel at about 6–7 km (3.7–4.3 mi) per second; the velocity increases within the deep mantle to about 13 km (8.1 mi) per second.

The study of earthquakes is called seismology.

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