This article talks about two recently striking earthquakes.  Earthquakes of magnitudes exceeding 7.0 struck Japan and Ecuador just hours apart on Saturday.  The two however are not related.  The two quakes occurred about 9,000 miles apart. That is too much of a distance for their to be a connection.  Large earthquakes can, and usually do, lead to more quakes; however, this is only if they are in the same region, or along/near the same fault.  These are called aftershocks. Sometimes a large quake can be linked to a smaller quake that occurred earlier, called a fore shock.  In the case, seismologists believe that several magnitude-6 quakes in the same region on the previous day were fore shocks to the Saturday event.  It turns out that the two earthquakes actually aren’t similar.  The magnitude 7.8 in Ecuador was what would be considered a classic mega thrust event.  A mega thrust quake occurs in the boundary zone where one of the planet’s tectonic plates is sliding under another which is the process of subduction.  Even though two 7.0 plus earthquakes occurred within the same day, this doesn’t mean that earthquake activity is increasing.  The geological survey, which monitors earthquakes around the world, says the average number of quakes per year is remarkably consistent.  For earthquakes between magnitude 7.0 and 7.9, there have been some years with more than 20 and others with fewer than 10, but the average, according to the survey, is about 15. That means that there is more than one per month, on average, and by chance, sometimes two quakes occur on the same day.  There are earthquakes occurring every day that people do not notice due to the fact that they are occurring in the ocean.  I think this is an article that shouldn’t alarm us but it is definitely good that we keep record of when earthquakes occur and continue to study them.

References:

Fountain, Henry. “Are Earthquakes in Japan and Ecuador Related? The Science Says No.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 17 Apr. 2016. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.