Santa Cruz Aftershocks

Large earthquakes will often be followed by many aftershocks. The one near the Solomon Islands yesterday has had a number. The map below illustrates it excellently:

A number of the aftershocks have been greater than 5 on the richter scale.

A couple of questions that might guide your thinking:
Why might aftershocks still cause much damage though they are smaller than the original earthquake? Can people prepare for aftershocks?

Click on the map above to go to its live site hosted by the USGS, or click below to see another aftershock map of the area from earthquaketrack.com HERE.

Amazing video of Japanese Earthquake

The video below gives an outstanding view of the buildup in terms of groundshaking to the Japanese earthquake of 2011 and the aftershocks that followed. It is worth watching through with sound as well. As the year goes on, the regularity of earthquakes in the area is made clear, as is the location of the boundaries with relation to Japan. However as March the 10th/11th commences, there is a huge release of energy that takes some months to subside.

This is an excellent visual representation of the scale and sudden onset of the event.

A2 self directed research - English Earthquakes and Vesuvius

As part of their global issues study, the A2 students have had time for their own research to satisfy questions they have had which relate to the tectonic hazards element of the course. Below are two excellent posts from the A2 global issues blog bsglobalissues.blogspot.co.uk

Read on below:

Earthquake In England?

I was wondering why there are occasional EQ's in the UK even though we are not close to a plate boundary, where science tells us EQ's should occur.

In my research I found that the key to it all lies in the African and Eurasion plates movement. These have created multiple fault lines as shown in this image - 

They occur more than we think - http://www.earthquakes.bgs.ac.uk/ - this shows the amount over the last 50 days with more detail within them.

Even the Daily Mail have got involved - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1312608/UK-overdue-earthquake-kill-scores-people-moment.html - A slighlty exaggerated state of event but good detail nonetheless.

J.P.Strode

Mt.Vesuvius eruption 79 AD

For my research today, I tried to answer the question of why Pompeii was so badly affected by the eruption of Mt.Vesuvius in 79 AD. Pyroclastic flows swept the city and everything was buried under an extremely hot layer of ash. The city was preserved in time and there was one thing which astounded archaeologists the most when they rediscovered the city. This was the human remains which were found on the site. Although the exact number of people who died in the eruption is unknown, it is predicted that a large proportion of the city's population was killed. There are a few reasons which could explain why the eruption had such a big impact on the city's population. Firstly, although the locals were aware of the plumes of smoke rising from the volcano (a journal was found documenting the signs leading up to the eruption) no precautions were taken. They thought of it as the gods letting off steam therefore no actions were taken until it was too late. Like volcanic eruptions in the modern world, tremors and seismic activities were felt leading up to the eruption. They also chose to ignore this as they were unaware of what could come next. When the volcano finally erupted, the people were caught by surprise and didn't know how to react. Some chose to flee the city and it is likely these people survived as the only affect on them was ash deposits. Those who chose to hide in the safety of their homes were the ones killed. As the pyroclastic flow swept the city, the infrastructure was unable to withstand the speed and temperatures and thus people were buried and burned. The main reason why the eruption of Mt.Vesuvius was so devastating was the lack of awareness. In the modern world, this could still be the case particularly in LEDCs. If large volcanoes are not monitored, locals could be at an increased risk as precautions and responses will not be taken to ensure they are safe. This shows that raising awareness and having an efficient system of response is vital in reducing the impacts of natural hazards, even in the modern world.

K.S.Chan

Follow NOAA Expedition to Ring of Fire Live

There is an excellent site set up where you can watch a live expedition to an undersea area of the ring of fire. There is plenty of video available and maps of the area.

There is a live video feed of the expedition as well.

Click the link below to see the video:

http://trap.it/#!traps/id/e4e03aa0-beef-4216-b937-2a304adec440/jump/6ArT7ibRd0064csiZaZs

Social Good Summit - get involved

The UN Social Good Summit starts today. There are some excellent ways to follow whats going on:

1) You can follow and watch it live online here:

2) You can follow it on twitter with the hashtag: #sgsGlobal

3) We have also set up a live twitter feed on this site, just click on 'Live News' to the right of this post to watch it update:

The video below is an excellent rundown of what it is about and how you could get involved.....

Haiti Earthquake - excellent read

J.Taylor has written a genuinely very interesting case study on the causes of the Haiti Earthquake. Click the image to open it in a new tab to read.

Chile Earthquake 2010

S.Holland has produced this excellent study on the 2010 Chile Earthquake. Click the image to open it in a new tab and read it.

New Research Links Added

You can now search all of our twitter hashtags by subject by clicking on the research Tab at the top of this page. The link to the twitter search is at the top of that page.

We have also added some excellent blogs and websites to that Tab, both specialist and general.

If you are a twitter user, you can look at our latest tweets under our username: @BSgeography, or search our tweets using #bs followed by any geographical topic.

Climatic hazards, Sustainability and Tectonics are the most developed at present.

Excellent Swanage Map

Below is an excellent map of the Isle of Purbeck made by Tom Lousada. Underneath he details how he created it. This is a very useful set of skills to practise in general, but they will be particularly helpful for writing up fieldwork projects.
(To see the map in a larger format, just click on it)

Slide Background:
The slide background was a screenshot taken off Google Earth. The Google Earth Image had been created by Pinpointing various geological features; i.e. Durdle Door, using the Pinpoint button on the top bar.
The layers of rock geology were created by drawing a polygon over the areas of each rock type. The data for this was taken from the booklet we received before beginning the task. These polygons were then made only 60% opaque and pinned to the ground so that we could see the land underneath.
Making sure only the Pins and the polygons were ticked on the side bar, the screen was then print screened and pasted into Paint where it was then cropped and saved as an image. A PowerPoint document was then opened up and the layout changed to blank. By right-clicking on the slide, format background was selected and the Google Earth picture was selected from a file. The edges were then edited so that the picture was 0 on every side.

Pictures on slide:
After finding pictures of each geological feature on Google, they were all pasted onto the document. Making sure that they were all selected as ‘tight’ in the text wrapping pane, they were spread evenly around the document, avoiding the top and bottom right hand corners, with each picture near to its corresponding Pinpoint.
Arrows were then inserted from the pictures to their Pinpoints and the colour changed so that they could be easily seen against the background.

Title and Key:The title and key were both created by inserting a textbox into the top and bottom right-hand corners and then changing the ‘fill’ of the textbox to white. At the top, the title was written in bold and underlined in a large font, while underneath was a brief summary of what the slide showed and how they were formed. At the bottom, a key was placed describing the colours of the geology on the background in terms of what rock type they were (and whether they were more or less resistant).

By Tom Lousada