Earthquakes and volcanos Flashcards
ring of fire
The Ring of Fire is a region around much of the rim of the Pacific Ocean where many volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur. The Ring of Fire is a horseshoe-shaped belt about 40,000 km long and up to about 500 km wide
strike-slip fault
vertical (or nearly vertical) fractures where the blocks have mostly moved horizontally.
normal fault
inclined fractures where the blocks have mostly shifted vertically.
Reverse fault
a dip-slip fault in which the hanging wall moves upwards, relative to the footwall.
P-waves
the fastest seismic waves and can move through solid, liquid, or gas.
S-waves
transverse waves that travel slower than P-waves. In this case, particle motion is perpendicular to the direction of wave propagation.
epicenter
the point on the earth’s surface vertically above the focus of an earthquake.
focus
deep-focus earthquake in seismology is an earthquake with a hypocenter depth exceeding 300 km. They occur almost exclusively at convergent boundaries in association with subducted oceanic lithosphere.
Richter magnitude scale
quantitative measure of an earthquake’s magnitude
explosive volcano
Stratovolcanoes are more likely to produce explosive eruptions due to gas building up in the viscous magma.
nonexplosive volcano
Non-explosive eruption of lava appears to result from rapid, sub-surface gas release from magma ascending as a permeable foam
krakatoa
Krakatoa, also transcribed Krakatau, is a caldera in the Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra in the Indonesian province of Lampung. The caldera is part of a volcanic island group comprising four islands.
yellowstone supervolcano
The Yellowstone Caldera, sometimes referred to as the Yellowstone Supervolcano, is a volcanic caldera and supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park in the Western United States. The caldera and most of the park are located in the northwest corner of Wyoming.
San Andreas fault
he San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly 1,200 kilometers through California. It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is right-lateral strike-slip.
Mid-ocean ridge
