The Changing Earth and Us

The hazardous Earth

• the active and changing Earth has natural processes that can have disastrous impacts on people
• what are some of these?
• are they controllable by humans?
• are we exacerbating these hazards?
world map of natural hazards
• earthquakes and tsunamis are major hazards
• volcanoes, hurricanes and typhoons are also a big part of that

1. tectonic hazards - release of seismic energy at fault zones in the Earth

• seismic events are acoustics events moving through the solid Earth
vs an ultrasound - acoustic event through your body
• an earthquake is ground motion (shaking) resulting from a sudden release of acoustic energy in the
lithosphere
• normally these occur along geological faults - planar fractures in the earth
◦tectonic stress/ energy builds up when faults are locked, and when these faults rupture or slip,
seismic energy is released in the form of an earthquake
• what earthquakes do damage?
◦earthquake magnitude - a measure of the strength of an earthquake is the Richter scale
◦it is calculated by the amplitude of the seismic waves from an e/q
◦this is the logarithmic scale; i.e., each number increase in the magnitude means
◦this is somewhat dated (but commonly referred to); we now use the moment magnitude scale
◦magnitude 10 has never been recorded, more theoretical, the entire planet would have to fall
apart/ rupture to create that much energy

• what are the biggest earthquakes recorded?

◦1960 9.5 Chile, Valdivia earthquake, that's a subduction zone
◦1964 9.2 Alaska
◦2004 9.1 Sumatra
◦2011 9.1 Japan
◦1952 9.0 Kamchatka
◦1906 8.8 Ecuador
◦2010 8.8 Chile
◦the great ones don't happen very often
◦happens the most near subduction zones and oceans

• Case study: 2023 Turkiye events

◦at 4:17am Feb 6, a M7.8 earthquake occurred in SE Turkiye
◦followed by a M7.5 events nearby at 1:24pm that same day
◦rupture along the East Anatolian Fault
◦activation of new surface fault

(missed some stuff)

• can we predict earthquakes?
◦consider:
‣ what methods can be used to predict earthquakes?
‣ what makes them dif cult to forecast/ predict?
‣ do we have some general idea of where/ when will occur?
‣ what can we do with a prediction?
‣ what should we do without an ability to predict?

• is the frequency of earthquakes increasing?

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2. Tsunami hazards
• series of ocean waves created when sea oor is rapidly displaced eg by an undersea earthquake
• could also be triggered by undersea landslide asteroid impact
• from japanese tsu(harbour) nami(wave)
• not tidal waves
• even a small displacement of the sea oor causes a tsunami (just 10m vertical fault motion
displacement can induce a massive tsunami)
• a major earthquake with modest vertical fault rupture causes uplift of several km of a water column
above
• this is a huge amount of energy transferred to ocean (eg compared to wind perturbation of water)