Your Objective

Use earthquake data from a transform plate boundaries in ocean regions off of the Pacific Northwest to determine what relationships of earthquakes along the boundary over time.

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Data Tips

When the site loads, you are able to see all of the earthquake data from two weeks in May 2015 throughout the Coastal Endurance Array. You can interact with the data by:

Note, the color denotes earthquake depth, with darker blues representing deeper depths (up to 50km) and dark red representing shallower depths (0km). The yellows are in-between. The circles on the map are sized by the earthquake magnitude.

Questions for Thought

Orientation Questions
  • Across what geographic area are you able to observe earthquake data in this map?
  • What is the range of earthquake magnitudes in these data?
  • Where do you see the largest earthquakes and the smallest earthquakes along the plate boundary?
Interpretation Questions
  • What is the relationship between earthquake size (magnitude) and location over time along this transform plate boundary in May 2015?
  • What is your evidence of the relationship?
  • How does this relationship support, or lack of relationship challenge, what you previously knew about features at transform plate boundaries?
  • What questions do you still have about features at transform plate boundaries?

Background Information

Click on the images below to learn more about where and how the dataset above was collected.

Dataset Information

Data for this activity were retrieved from the USGS Earthquake Catalog.