Russia's Earthquakes and Mitigation Strategies

 Examples of where earthquakes are located in Russia can clearly be seen in this image taken from a 2017 publication. Areas where earthquakes are the most frequent include the Kamchatca Peninsula and Sakhalin Island in the East, as well as the Caucasus Region in the southwest. This is because both areas are near plate boundaries, and Kamchatca as (mentioned before) has extreme amounts of tectonic activity. Something that I didn't understand about the map was why there was earthquakes documented along the east going towards the Artic Ocean despite there not being any plate boundaries near there (as it seemed to follow a random path along the Eurasian plate). However, i found my answer in the form of this graph which displays the fault lines located in Russia. Something to note is that the maps are projected differently, so it is recommended to try to match up similar landmarks such as islands or bodies of water when comparing the two graphs.



These faults are the cause of the occasional earthquake occurring far from any plate boundary. Those fault would get "activated" by stress caused by the movement of larger plates, which in turn causes earthquakes in places where there might not typically be large amounts of tectonic activity. However, something I will note is that almost every catastrophic earthquake Russia I could find documented occurred at or near a plate boundary. One of the largest Russian earthquakes in the last 100 years was a magnitude 9.0 earthquake occurring in 1952 in Kamchatka. This earthquake was also the cause of a massive tsunami which devastated the town of "Severo-Kurilsk."

Mitigation strategies can include the creation of emergency food, drink and first aid kits, and keeping informed/alerted via the "MyShake" app. A way you can look into alerts that were but out by Russia can be done via this website. From what I can tell, Russia uses ground based stations as well as satellites to predict when the next earthquake may occur. This being said, the sooner the public can be informed of upcoming danger beforehand, the more one can mitigate the effects of a natural disaster.

Comments

  1. Lauren B.February 11, 2024 at 11:58 PM

    Hi Jack, I found it very intriguing that both of our countries have experienced an extremely dangerous earthquake somewhat recently. One thing I discovered about while reading your blog was that since Russia is a bigger country, it has more fault lines and tectonic boundaries than that of Nepal, a smaller country.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ana GGFebruary 12, 2024 at 10:47 AM

    Very interesting reflection!- and yes, faults can make the Earth shake despite not being close to a plate boundary!

    ReplyDelete

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