Posted by: Geology Tiger November 6, 2008
How can we detect Earthquakes??
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Mukurdhom bro,

Actually I was feeling tired and was not in the mood of writing. But as I saw that you need it for your presentation I will try to give you some points. If you are only talking about the earthquake detection then it is of course the seismograph which will measure the earthquake. Earthquake is measured in various scale and scale still in use is Richter but while measuring the earthquake by modern equipments they don't measure in Richter scale but as it is commonly used one, afterwards the convert the value in Richter scale. Richter scale is a log scale means if you have earthquake of 7 richter scale and 8 richter scale then 8 richter scale is 10 times greater than 7. Another thing about earthquake measurement is it is measured for magnitude and intensity.

Ok I am feeling that you want to know more about earthquake prediction rather than earthquake detection. Usually prediction is not a science and also for earthquake it's hard to predict earthquake. I have read somewhere that japanese scientists have been able to predict the earthquakes 30 sec earlier or something like this. I don't know how much useful will that discovery be. But some scientists have been defitintely measured uneven activities on and inside the earth surface. for eg. the temperature of the earth surface may suddenly rise up, the level of groundwater below the surface may rise and fall remarkably, the gas content of soil may change. Actually the origin of the earthquake is related with the release of energy that is stored somewhere inside the earth surface. With the release of seismic wave there will be also release of other types of energy like heat, sound which will create all these unusal pattern. Besides that the animal behaviour has been used for the earthquake prediction from long time. They may hear sound of different frequency which we can't hear and animal usually show unusual behaviour. After a big earthquake we may get several smaller earthquakes which are known as aftershocks or our big shock may be smaller one acting as preshocks after which more big shocks may appear.

Long interval earthquake prediction can be done based on the tectonic movements of an area and earthquake occurrences over there. As Nepal is getting northward push from India from long time and large scale earthquake has not occurred over there for a long time scientists are expecting one large scale earthquake to occur over there within few years which will relase all the stored energy.

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