Earthquake Basics

Epicenter, hypocenter, aftershock, foreshock, fault, fault plane, seismograph, P-waves, magnitude,
intensity, peak acceleration, amplification...

We hear them. After big earthquakes, we say them. But what do these terms mean? What do they
mean for what we felt and what we will feel the next time? Do we really understand what
seismologists are saying?

This section describes how earthquakes happen and how they are measured. It also explains why the
same earthquake can shake one area differently than another area. It finishes with information we
expect to learn after future earthquakes.

EARTHQUAKES AND FAULTS

What is an earthquake?

An earthquake is caused by a sudden slip on a fault, much like what happens when you snap your fingers.
Before the snap, you push your fingers together and sideways. Because you are pushing them together, friction
keeps them from moving to the side. When you push sideways hard enough to overcome this friction, your
fingers move suddenly, releasing energy in the form of sound waves that set the air vibrating and travel from
your hand to your ear, where you hear the snap.

The same process goes on in an earthquake. Stresses in the earth's outer layer push the sides of the fault
together. The friction across the surface of the fault holds the rocks together so they do not slip immediately
when pushed sideways. Eventually enough stress builds up and the rocks slip suddenly, releasing energy in
waves that travel through the rock to cause the shaking that we feel during an earthquake.

Just as you snap your fingers with the whole area of your fingertip and thumb, earthquakes happen over an area
of the fault, called the rupture surface. However, unlike your fingers, the whole fault plane does not slip at once.
The rupture begins at a point on the fault plane called the hypocenter, a point usually deep down on the fault.
The epicenter is the point on the surface directly above the hypocenter. The rupture keeps spreading until
something stops it (exactly how this happens is a hot research topic in seismology).

Aftershocks

Part of living with earthquakes is living with aftershocks. Earthquakes come in clusters. In any earthquake
cluster, the largest one is called the mainshock; anything before it is a foreshock, and anything after it is an
aftershock.

Aftershocks are earthquakes that usually occur near the mainshock. The stress on the mainshock's fault changes
during the mainshock and most of the aftershocks occur on the same fault. Sometimes the change in stress is
great enough to trigger aftershocks on nearby faults as well.

An earthquake large enough to cause damage will probably produce several felt aftershocks within the first
hour. The rate of aftershocks dies off quickly. The day after the mainshock has about half the aftershocks of the
first day. Ten days after the mainshock there are only a tenth the number of aftershocks. An earthquake will be
called an aftershock as long as the rate of earthquakes is higher than it was before the mainshock. For big
earthquakes this might go on for decades.
Bigger earthquakes have more and larger aftershocks. The bigger the mainshock, the bigger the largest
aftershock, on average, though there are many more small aftershocks than large ones. Also, just as smaller
earthquakes can continue to occur a year or more after a mainshock, there is still a chance for a large aftershock
long after an earthquake.

Foreshocks

Sometimes what we think is a mainshock is followed by a larger earthquake. Then the original earthquake is
considered a foreshock. The chance of this happening dies off quickly with time just like aftershocks. After
three days the risk is almost gone.

Sometimes, the chance that an event is a foreshock seems higher than average - usually because of its proximity
to a major fault. The California Emergency Management Agency will then issue an advisory based on scientists'
recommendations. These are the only officially recognized short-term "predictions."

What is a fault?

Earthquakes occur on faults. A fault is a thin zone of crushed rock separating blocks of the earth's crust. When
an earthquake occurs on one of these faults, the rock on one side of the fault slips with respect to the other.
Faults can be centimeters to thousands of kilometers long. The fault surface can be vertical, horizontal, or at
some angle to the surface of the earth. Faults can extend deep into the earth and may or may not extend up to
the earth's surface.

How do we know a fault exists?

 Past fault movement has brought together rocks that used to be farther apart;
 Earthquakes on the fault have left surface evidence, such as surface ruptures or fault scarps (cliffs made by
earthquakes);
 Earthquakes recorded by seismographic networks are mapped and indicate the location of a fault.

Some faults have not shown these signs and we will not know they are there until they produce a large
earthquake. Several damaging earthquakes in California have occurred on faults that were previously unknown.

Carrizo Plain National Monument along the San Andreas fault

How do we study faults?

Surface features that have been broken and offset by the movement of faults are used to determine how fast the faults move
and thus how often earthquakes are likely to occur. For example, a streambed that crosses the San Andreas fault near Los
Angeles is now offset 83 meters (91 yards) from its original course. The sediments in the abandoned streambed are about
2,500 years old. If we assume movement on the San Andreas has cut off that streambed within the last 2,500 years, then the
average slip rate on the fault is 33 millimeters (1.3 inches) per year. This does not mean the fault slips 33 millimeters each
year. Rather, it stores up 33 millimeters of slip each year to be released in infrequent earthquakes. The last earthquake
offset the streambed another 5 meters (16 feet). If we assume that all earthquakes have 5 meters (5000 millimeters) of slip,
we will have earthquakes on average every 150 years: 5000 millimeters divided by 33 millimeters per year equals 150 years.
This does not mean the earthquakes will be exactly 150 years apart. While the San Andreas fault has averaged 150 years
between events, earthquakes have occurred as few as 45 years and as many as 300 years apart.

Earthquakes and Faults

A fault line is a fracture along which the crust has moved. Stresses in the crust along New Zealand’s plate boundary have
broken it into separate fragments or blocks that move relative to each other along fault lines. To watch a video flyover of
the Greendale Fault in Canterbury click here.

The relationship between earthquakes and faults was first established by nineteenth century geologists following the 1855
Wellington Earthquake in New Zealand.

As far as seismologists now understand, all but the very deepest earthquakes (deeper than 600km) occur on faults.
Seismic waves are generated when the two sides of the fault rapidly slip past each other. For most earthquakes, the faults
do not break the surface, so the faults can be "seen" only through analysing the seismic waves. Faults can be anywhere
from metres to a thousand kilometres long. Seismologists still have much to learn about the mechanism that causes the
deepest earthquakes. At 600km, the earth is probably too warm for faults to be brittle like glass, so some sort of chemical
change might occur very rapidly.

Find out more about:

 Different types of Faults

 When is a Fault "Active"
 Major faults in New Zealand
Faults are fractures in Earth's crust where rocks on either side of the crack have slid past each other.

Sometimes the cracks are tiny, as thin as hair, with barely noticeable movement between the rock layers. But faults can
also be hundreds of miles long, such as the San Andreas Fault in California and the Anatolian Fault in Turkey, both of
which are visible from space.

Three types of faults

There are three kinds of faults: strike-slip, normal and thrust (reverse) faults, said Nicholas van der Elst, a seismologist at
Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York. Each type is the outcome of different
forces pushing or pulling on the crust, causing rocks to slide up, down or past each other.

"Each describes a different kind of relative motion," van der Elst said.
Strike-slip faults indicate rocks are sliding past each other horizontally, with little to no vertical
movement. Both the San Andreas and Anatolian Faults are strike-slip.
Normal faults create space. Two blocks of crust pull apart, stretching the crust into a valley. The
Basin and Range Province in North America and the East African Rift Zone are two well-known
regions where normal faults are spreading apart Earth's crust.
Reverse faults, also called thrust faults, slide one block of crust on top of another. These faults are
commonly found in collisions zones, where tectonic plates push up mountain ranges such as the
Himalayas and the Rocky Mountains.
Strike-slip faults are usually vertical, while normal and reverse faults are often at an angle to the
surface of the Earth. The different styles of faulting can also combine in a single event, with one fault
moving in both a vertical and strike-slip motion during an earthquake. [Countdown: 13 Crazy Earthquake
Facts]
All faults are related to the movement of Earth's tectonic plates. The biggest faults mark the boundary
between two plates. Seen from above, these appear as broad zones of deformation, with many faults
braided together. "Plate boundaries are always growing and changing, so these faults develop kinks
and bends as they slide past each other, which generates more faults," van der Elst said.

Individual fault lines are usually narrower than their length or depth. Most earthquakes strike less than
50 miles (80 kilometers) below the Earth’s surface. The deepest earthquakes occur on reverse faults
at about 375 miles (600 km) below the surface. Below these depths, rocks are probably too warm for
faults to generate enough friction to create earthquakes, van der Elst said.

Earth’s biggest exposed fault

For nearly a century, scientists have been aware of a 4.47 mile-deep (7.2 km) oceanic abyss —
known as the Weber Deep — located off the coast of eastern Indonesia in the Banda Sea. But until
recently, they had been unable to explain how it got so deep.

The Weber Deep is the deepest point in the ocean that is not in a trench; trenches are formed during
the subduction of two tectonic plates — when one slides under the other. However, the Weber Deep
is a forearc basin, which is essentially a depression located in front of the Banda arc (curved chain of
volcanic islands), according to New Atlas. So the question remained: Why is the Weber Deep as
deep as a trench?
Based on studies of the sea bed and knowledge of geology, one hypothesis stated that the abyss
was the result of an extension along a potential low-angle fault — but this theory had remained
unproven. Now, researchers at Australian National University (ANU) and Royal Holloway University of
London have confirmed this theory. Lead researcher Jonathan Pownall came upon extensions of the
fault line on the mountains of the Banda arc islands while on a boat trip.

“I was stunned to see the hypothesized fault plane, this time not on a computer screen, but poking
above the waves,” said Pownall in a Science Daily press release. Indeed, the huge abyss had been
formed by “extension along what might be Earth’s largest-identified exposed fault plane,” he said.
Through further analysis of high-resolution maps of the sea floor, the geologists discovered that the
bottom-level rocks were cut by hundreds of straight parallel scars. These cuts reveal that a piece of
the Earth’s crust “bigger than Belgium or Tasmania” must have been torn apart by 74.5-mile (120 km)
of extension along a low-angle, crack — or detachment fault — to form the depression, according to
the press release.
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This Banda Detachment fault represents a rip in the ocean floor that is exposed for more than 23,166
square miles (60,000 square km). In fact, in some areas, the amount of extension was so severe that
there was no longer any trace of oceanic crust, according to New Atlas.

The new find will help geologists assess the dangers of future tsunamis stemming from this area
which is located in the Ring of Fire, a hotbed of earthquake and volcanic activity in the Pacific Ocean.

Different types of Faults

A close look at faults helps geologists to understand how the tectonic plates have moved relative to one another.

Types of movement of crustal blocks that can occur along faults during an earthquake:
©Redrawn from University of Otago (Richard Sibson)

1. Where the crust is being pulled apart, normal faulting occurs, in which the overlying (hanging-wall) block moves down
with respect to the lower (foot wall) block.

2. Where the crust is being compressed, reverse faulting occurs, in which the hanging-wall block moves up and over the
footwall block – reverse slip on a gently inclined plane is referred to as thrust faulting.

3. Crustal blocks may also move sideways past each other, usually along nearly-vertical faults. This ‘strike-
slip’ movement is described as sinistral when the far side moves to the left, and dextral, when the far side moves to the
right.

4. An oblique slip involves various combinations of these basic movements, as in the 1855 Wairarapa Fault rupture,
which included both reverse and dextral movement. (COM pg. 100).

Faults can be as short as a few metres and as long as 1000km. The fault rupture from an earthquake isn’t always a
straight or continuous line. Sometimes there can be short offsets between parts of the fault, and even major faults can
have large bends in them.

Types of Earthquakes & Faults

There are four different types of earthquakes: Tectonic, volcanic, collapse and explosion.

o A tectonic earthquake is one that occurs when the earth's crust breaks due to geological forces on rocks and
adjoining plates that cause physical and chemical changes.
o A volcanic earthquake is any earthquake that results from tectonic forces which occur in conjunction with
volcanic activity.
o A collapse earthquake are small earthquakes in underground caverns and mines that are caused by seismic waves
produced from the explosion of rock on the surface.
o An explosion earthquake is an earthquake that is the result of the detonation of a nuclear and/or chemical device.

There are three different types of faults: Normal, Reverse, and Transcurrent (Strike-Slip).

o Normal faults form when the hanging wall drops down. The forces that create normal faults are pulling the sides
apart, or extensional.
o Reverse faults form when the hanging wall moves up. The forces creating reverse faults are compressional,
pushing the sides together.
o Transcurrent or Strike-slip faults have walls that move sideways, not up or down.