Frequent Earthquakes?

An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor, or temblor) is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes are recorded with a seismometer, also known as a seismograph. The moment magnitude (or the related and mostly obsolete Richter magnitude) of an earthquake is conventionally reported, with magnitude 3 or lower earthquakes being mostly imperceptible and magnitude 7 causing serious damage over large areas. Intensity of shaking is measured on the modified Mercalli scale.

At the Earth's surface, earthquakes manifest themselves by shaking and sometimes displacing the ground. When a large earthquake epicenter is located offshore, the seabed sometimes suffers sufficient displacement to cause a tsunami. The shaking in earthquakes can also trigger landslides and occasionally volcanic activity.

Earthquakes are caused mostly by rupture of geological faults, but also by volcanic activity, landslides, mine blasts, and nuclear experiments. An earthquake's point of initial rupture is called its focus or hypocenter. The term epicenter refers to the point at ground level directly above the hypocenter.

Minor earthquakes occur nearly constantly around the world in places like California and Alaska in the U.S., as well as in Guatemala. Chile, Peru, Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, the Azores in Portugal, Turkey, New Zealand, Greece, Italy, and Japan, but earthquakes can occur almost anywhere, including New York City, London, and Australia. Larger earthquakes occur less frequently, the relationship being exponential; for example, roughly ten times as many earthquakes larger than magnitude 4 occur in a particular time period than earthquakes larger than magnitude 5. In the (low seismicity) United Kingdom, for example, it has been calculated that the average recurrences are: an earthquake of 3.7 - 4.6 every year, an earthquake of 4.7 - 5.5 every 10 years, and an earthquake of 5.6 or larger every 100 years. This is an example of the Gutenberg-Richter law.

According to US Geology Society(USGS),there's a 100 percent chance of an earthquake today. Though millions of persons may never experience an earthquake, they are very common occurrences on this planet. So today -- somewhere -- an earthquake will occur. It may be so light that only sensitive instruments will perceive its motion; it may shake houses, rattle windows, and displace small objects; or it may be sufficiently strong to cause property damage, death, and injury.

Most of the world's earthquakes (90%, and 81% of the largest) take place in the 40,000-km-long, horseshoe-shaped zone called the circum-Pacific seismic belt, also known as the Pacific Ring of Fire, which for the most part bounds the Pacific Plate. This is the most probable location for today's earthquake. Massive earthquakes tend to occur along other plate boundaries, too, such as along the Himalayan Mountains But it could hit any location, because no region is entirely free of earthquakes

Cause of the Earthquake
Tectonic earthquakes will occur anywhere within the earth where there is sufficient stored elastic strain energy to drive fracture propagation along a fault plane. In the case of transform or convergent type plate boundaries, which form the largest fault surfaces on earth, they will move past each other smoothly and aseismically only if there are no irregularities or asperities along the boundary that increase the frictional resistance. Most boundaries do have such asperities and this leads to a form of stick-slip behaviour. Once the boundary has locked, continued relative motion between the plates leads to increasing stress and therefore, stored strain energy in the volume around the fault surface. This continues until the stress has risen sufficiently to break through the asperity, suddenly allowing sliding over the locked portion of the fault, releasing the stored energy. This energy is released as a combination of radiated elastic strain seismic waves, frictional heating of the fault surface, and cracking of the rock, thus causing an earthquake.
While most earthquakes are caused by movement of the Earth's tectonic plates, human activity can also produce earthquakes. Four main activities contribute to this phenomenon: constructing large dams and buildings, drilling and injecting liquid into wells, and by coal mining and oil drilling. Perhaps the best known example is the 2008 Sichuan earthquake in China's Sichuan Province in May; this tremor resulted in 69,227 fatalities and is the 19th deadliest earthquake of all time. The Zipingpu Dam is believed to have fluctuated the pressure of the fault 1,650 feet (503 m) away; this pressure probably increased the power of the earthquake and accelerated the rate of movement for the fault. The greatest earthquake in Australia's history was also induced by humanity, through coal mining. The city of Newcastle was built over a large sector of coal mining areas. The earthquake was spawned from a fault which reactivated due to the millions of tonnes of rock removed in the mining process.

Earthquake cannot be accurately predicted, but it can be monitored by using scientific technique.

After Haiti Earthquake 2010 on 12-1-2010, the following significant earthquakes were reported :

* Magnitude 6.1 EASTERN TURKEY March 08, 2010
* Magnitude 6.8 SOUTHERN SUMATRA, INDONESIA March 05, 2010
* Magnitude 6.6 OFFSHORE BIO-BIO, CHILE March 05, 2010
* Magnitude 6.4 South Taiwan,Kaohsiung city, March 04, 2010.
* Magnitude 8.8 OFFSHORE MAULE, CHILE February 27, 2010
* Magnitude 7.0 RYUKYU ISLANDS, JAPAN February 26, 2010
* Magnitude 6.9 CHINA-RUSSIA-NORTH KOREA BORDER REGION February 18, 2010
* Magnitude 5.9 OFFSHORE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA February 04, 2010

Related article

1. USGS, http://earthquake.usgs.gov/
2. Earthquake, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake
3. Malaysian Meteorological Department, http://www.met.gov.my/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=265&Itemid=367