In less than 48 hours during the month of April, two earthquakes were world-class news, one in Kyushu, Japan , with at least 42 dead, and another in Ecuador , with a figure that exceeds 500 dead; This has drawn attention to the Pacific Ocean, which in the last decade has been the protagonist of several devastating earthquakes and tsunamis, leading us to wonder why there are so many earthquakes in the Pacific.
Why are there so many earthquakes? in the Pacific?
"In the Pacific, 90% of all earthquakes in the world and 80% of the largest earthquakes occur," he said in 2014 Herando Taveras , director of the seismology area of the Geophysical Institute of Peru (IGP), and this is due to a geographical phenomenon known as the Pacific Fire Belt , a kind of inverted horseshoe that extends from America to Asia, also known as Ring of Fire or Circumpacifico Belt .
The ring of fire is not free, in it 75% of l The volcanoes of the world (active and inactive), around 452 craters that have left their traumatic mark on the memory of humanity and that are only a sign of the intense activity that takes place in the Pacific subsoil.
This ring, about 40,000 kilometers long, joins Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, United States and Canada, with territories of Russia, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand.
The eruptions and spectacular lava outcrops are an expression of the encounter and friction of several tectonic plates in the Pacific bed, as well as earthquakes and earthquakes., sometimes accompanied by catastrophic tsunamis.
For example, earthquakes in California are associated with the dynamic between the North American and Pacific plates, the recent earthquake in Ecuador with the subduction of the plate Nazca under the South American plate, which has also been responsible for the earthquakes in Chile. Instead, the earthquake in Kyushu was caused by the Eurasian plate.
The proximity between the earthquakes of Ecuador and Japan does not imply that one has caused the other , its situation in the Ring of Fire is what links them.Today there is more information and we quickly learn about the Earth shocks, which are more frequent than we imagine.On the whole planet there are at least 16 large earthquakes per year (above 6 on the Ritcher scale) and about 20,000 of less intensity.
Yes We return to the initial figure, 90 and 80% in the Pacific, we will understand the tragic coincidence of these days, which has united the Japanese and Ecuadorian people in the same pain.
Read another of our interesting articles, will a mega earthquake divide the American continent?
Images: Steven Kay, ♒ ♒ ♒ ♒, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
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