Before anyone starts to panic, though, we have to consider the whole picture. While magnitude 5 quakes were way over average for the year, many of these shakers were not isolated events. They were aftershocks of massive quakes which hit at very shallow depths. Because of our current magnetic pole shift land has been moving a little bit and the reverberations of large quakes were a bit stronger and lasted a bit longer as ground shifted adjusting to the current polar shift. If anyone were studying the shift in the poles, they may have expected as much. Mass aligns with the magnetic pole and when that pole shifts mass does, too. When the magnetic pole migrates far enough from the geographical pole centrifugal force will eventually shift the mass as it realigns. This means crustal movement is going to take place during a pole shift. Eventually the geographical pole will be shifted back into proximity of the magnetic pole.

Now we have to look at the polar shift to dispel a lot of bunk you probably have heard coming from pole shift alarmists. We are not all gonna die. Okay?  First of all, we are not talking about a complete flip of the magnetic poles. That is a possibility, but not likely and it won’t be as spectacular an event as some like to paint it up to be. The magnetic pole shifts periodically. The last shift was in the mid 1800′s. They happen every hundred to couple of hundred years. They do not kill everyone and everything on the planet. New mountains don’t crop up overnight, mass floods don’t occur. There is turbulent weather but not on the scale you would see in a Hollywood Disaster Film.

Magnetism does not “disappear” during a magnetic pole shift or even during a polar reversal. For a time the poles split and you get multiple poles and a lot of localized anomalies, but the magnetism does not just disappear. Even if it did disappear temporarily our atmosphere is quite thick. The radiation that people fear would have to travel through the equivalent of 10 feet of concrete to reach us. Interference to TV, Radio, and any satellite communications would be upset, but if being without your cell phone or TV satellite dish for a little while is your idea of a life altering disaster, congratulations. I wish all my problems were that trivial.

So for everyone who loves real science and gets sick of the fear mongering – this is a once in a lifetime chance to study how your planet reacts to magnetic pole shifting. If you are more into astronomy than earth science it may interest you to watch the pole shifts now occurring throughout our solar system at the present time.

Before listing the stats on this year’s quakes, here is a rundown on where the averages that we use come from for those of you who are new to these reports.

About The USGS and RHS1 Averages:

The USGS statistical averages are averages compiled from 1990 to 2000.  That is when global tracking was achieved and we have no way of knowing for sure how accurately those statistics represent numbers before that time.  There are scientists who did tracking, but there were also many very volatile areas that aren’t populated that were impossible to track before.  From old records we may want to  assume that there have been more recently, but there is no way to know for sure.

We also use an RHS1 average which is 3 year statistical average which was drawn from my three year quake report from  2006, 07, 08  that I will compare the quarterly statistics to, so we can see a more current trend.  At the end of this year we will add this year’s average to the three year average, making an average of 4  of 5 years since the middle of the current decade.  If data can be retrieved for 2009, a year in which our site was being rebuilt from hacker/virus injection damage, we will add those in to make a current half decade statistical average.

2010 GLOBAL EARTHQUAKE STATISTICS

These statistics do not include quakes of under 5 magnitude. There are just too many quakes under 5 mag for us to have resources and time to track these smaller quakes.  Magnitude 5 is the classification at which we start to consider quakes strong as well. Damage is light and rare for quakes under 5 magnitudes. Death tolls usually don’t occur until magnitude 6 and in the years that RHS1 has been tracking quakes only one death has been reported resulting from a magnitude 5 earthquake.

8 Magnitude and Stronger:
We had one this year.  The USGS average is 1, if any per year.  The RHS1 average is two per year. We are holding steady at the USGS low average for these massive quakes and 50% for the RHS1 average. With more quakes happening at shallower depths, the drop in this average is a very good thing.

7 Magnitude and Stronger:
We experienced a whopping 20 of these shakers this year. That exceeds the USGS yearly average of 17 by 3 bringing us to 117% of average.  The RHS1 average of 11 was also exceeded by almost double the average occurrence rate leaving us with a 81%  increase.  What a magnitude 7 quake can do when it hits at a depth of only 10 kms was witnessed in Haiti early in 2010.

6 Magnitude and Stronger:
We experienced  136 of these strong quakes in 2010.  The USGS average is 134 per year giving us an increase of only 1% from average rates.  RHS1 average is 159 annual mag 6 quakes per year so at only 85% of the recent average for this quake,  occurrences of this magnitude of quake dropped  a whole 15% from the recent average number. This figure is a bit surprising in light of the number of aftershocks that the two most destructive quakes caused.

5 Magnitude and Stronger:
There were 1684 of these quakes during 2010!  USGS average is 1319 per year leaving us a 27% increase in these quakes. The RHS1 average  is only 1275 per year which means that the average yearly number of these quakes has fallen since 2006.  2010  surpasses the RHS1 average by 32% – almost a full third more than usual in the last half of the first decade of the 21st century.

As stated before, hundreds of the 5 magnitude quakes were actually aftershocks of the 7 mag and Chile 8 mag quakes early in the year.  A few of the 6 magnitude quakes were also just aftershocks, so all in all, we didn’t have that abnormal a year even though these figures are high and will pull the 4 year average up just a notch on the RHS1 4 year average which I will be figuring soon. If the quakes continue at high rates we’ll see that pattern develop over the next few years. For now, it seems that, while earthquake occurrences are high for the year, most of the attention to them was caused by the shallow depths rather than the amount of quakes.

The deeper a quake is, the less it will be felt at ground level. A 7 magnitude quake happening 500 km below the surface may barely be felt, if it is at all, while a magnitude 4 happening at just a few kilometers below the surface may feel  more like a 5 magnitude quake. With the crustal shifting we’ve experienced this year, many quakes occurred at depths of 10 and 35 km. That means that more damage has been caused than usual and more attention has been given to earthquakes than usual. Most of the alarm is due to illusions of more prevalent shaking than actual increases of shaking other than the fact that the large, shallow quakes have caused more aftershocks due to crustal movement and they have also occurred at shallow levels where they were more noticeable than they would have been otherwise.

You can find continuing updates on earthquakes in the Earthwatch section of RHS1 forums.

Every now and then, however, a note arrives in my email box and let’s me know that my efforts are not in vain. Today I opened my email box to find this note:

Thank you for making it easy to use your site and all the info will keep me, the husband, and our 2 beautiful little ladies busy! We are so thankful for all the help you have given us. It was so easy to understand and so fun to learn all the history and search for all of these older not on the map places…it’s taught us more than to go get gold, but to learn our areas, our state history and how to really research what we are looking for. Links are great too!
– D’Anna

D’Anna – Thank YOU. It was awesome to hear that. You just picked a day that I really needed to hear it to write to us, too.

You see, RHS1 was becoming a vital resource for rockhounds. It took years to build and just after we really got into the swing of things with many contributors and members making friendships, sharing, having fun, and doing business here we were suddenly hit by a ruthless hacker, injected with some nasty virulent viruses, and generally had our whole php system wiped out…..for those that don’t know, that’s the system that allows us to build interactive programs such as our forums, photo gallery, and this gazette.

All in all, an email like this one, a post in the forum, or a picture posted in the Gallery actually mean something to the staff here at RHS1. We enjoy our community and it makes all the time and effort worthwhile when we see others finding it a valuable and fun place to stop, learn, share, and make friends.

Your email just provided me with another month’s worth of patience for rebuilding our community, and we appreciate you, too, D’Anna. Thanks again. A further Thanks to all of our contributing members here at RHS1. After all – the bottom line is that RHS1 isn’t about us – it’s about YOU.

There are a lot of people right now who will say that quakes have increased in frequency.  As of this quarter, they are absolutely correct.  There have been an extremely large amount of earthquakes this quarter – when we speak of 5 and six magnitude quakes, anyway.  7 magnitude quakes are actually about average or below, depending on which average you are using and we’re at the average for 8 magnitude.

Most of the overage of 5 magnitude quakes is aftershock from major quakes.  Chile’s recent 8.8 magnitude quake was the seventh largest in recent history and that area rumbled with 5 magnitude aftershocks for several weeks.  Only now are they tapering off.  The aftershocks of major quakes always have the capability of raising the stats for a quarter.

What is different about the recent quakes is they are all happening at depths of either 35 kilometers or 10 kilometers globally.  We are undergoing a shift in the lithosphere at these depths.  Many of the plate borders have already responded to the shift.  There are still areas that haven’t that we really hope will not be effected.

All in all, some of the stats are a bit startling, but there is still three quarters of a year for them to normalize and equal out.

The USGS statistical averages are averages since 1990.  That is when global tracking was achieved and we have no way of knowing for sure how accurately those statistics represent numbers before that time.  There are scientists who did tracking, but there were also many very volatile  areas that aren’t populated and it was impossible to track before.  From old records we can assume that there have been more recently, but there is no way to know for sure.

We also have an RHS1 3 year statistical average which was drawn from my three year quake report from  2006, 07, 08  that I will compare the quarterly statistics to, so we can see a more current trend.

What are the statistics?

8 Magnitude and Stronger:
We had one so far this year.  The 8.8 magnitude that hit Chili last month was the 7th largest in recent history.
The USGS average is 1, if any per year.  The RHS1 average is two per year.

7  Magnitude and Stronger:
We only had three of these this quarter.  The USGS average is 17 per year so we are light of average by around 30%.
RHS1 average is 11 annually, a  35% drop from the USGS average.  If this rate continues we will be  light by one per year so can still be considered in a very average range for these severe events.  In the first weeks of the 2nd quarter, however, you will see these quakes buck up to just barely over RSH1 averages and headed toward USGS averages.

6 Magnitude and Stronger:
Um….wow.
We had 48 of these strong shakers in this quarter.  This amount is over average any way you look at it.
The USGS average is 134 per year.  RHS1 average is up 16% from the USGS  at 159 annual mag 6 quakes.  At the rate of occurrence we saw this quarter we would be seeing  192 of these shakers. If this rate continues we will be 31% over the USGS average and  18% over the RHS1 average.   Ten of these quakes can be attributed to aftershocks of the 8.8 magnitude quake in Chile.  All but a few occurred at depths of 10 – 35 kilometers.  5 were at depths of greater than 100kms.  The rest were shallow quakes of 10 to 35 kilometers, with a few ranging to 50 kms deep so again we are seeing a rash of very shallow quakes for the most part.

5  Magnitude and Stronger:
Another Wow here and add a Yikes.
We had 565 magnitude 5 quakes this quarter.  A continuance of this rate would put us at a whopping 2260 for one year. That is a 42% increase from the USGS average of 1319 per year.  It is an even  larger increase from the RHS1 average which is only 1275 per year.  For the three years of tracking at RHS1, we actually had fewer than average mag 5 quakes. We are sitting on a 44% increase from the more recent 3 year average.  Again, many of these quakes – literally hundreds were aftershock tremors of strong quakes.

Aftershocks can be expected after any major quake.  The statistics for average amounts of quakes are built over years and the years always include some major quakes so the statistics do reflect these aftershocks as well as random quakes.  This year as our major quakes are occurring at shallow depths, we’re getting massive amounts of aftershocks, too. We are also experiencing these shallow quakes around the globe generally as well.  Doomsday sayers can  have fun with this shift in the lithosphere, but if you aren’t real fond of “end of the world” stories, you’re in the right place because I’m not going to tell you one.

Our crust shifts periodically just as our magnetic poles do.  A few years ago I found out that our magnetic North pole is traveling toward Siberia at the rate of 25 miles a year.  As a magnetic pole travels, matter will align with it just as it always does.  When this alignment begins to effect the centrifugal force, land mass will move.  That appears to be the case in the current frequencies of quakes as they are all being experienced at the same depths globally and the plate boundaries are being shaken with extreme strength indicating severe pressure on them.  If you find this movement frightening, if you live on a subduction zone or major fault line, you have a right to be worried.  So far several of these zones have been experiencing strong quakes. As far as the end of the world?  Um…don’t count this shaking being an indication of it.   Our magnetic poles shift fairly often.  They have done so several times in the last few hundred years and so far humans seem to be surviving as a species even though there are more people living in zones with catastrophic potentials.  If masses of people live in a volatile subduction zone area, we will see massive destruction when the zone snaps.  We will see destruction from tsunamis as humans continue to build in tsunami prone areas of coastlines.

While there is still no sure-fire means to predict earthquakes, the recent trend makes it likely that other plate boundaries will snap in the near future. You will find information about two of the most volatile subduction zones in the May RHS1 Connector newsletter.

Until then, may all your shaking take place on a dance floor.

<a href=”http://www.mylivesignature.com” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://signatures.mylivesignature.com/85678/heysal/3d7cebe4711209357a777bce172bf9a1.png” border=”0″ style=”border: 0 !important; background: transparent;” /></a>

]]> http://rockhoundstation1.net/wp/2010/earth-watch/rhs1-2010-1st-quarter-earthquake-report/feed/ 0 http://rockhoundstation1.net/wp/2010/events/upcoming-calendar-gem-specimen-picture-contest/ http://rockhoundstation1.net/wp/2010/events/upcoming-calendar-gem-specimen-picture-contest/#comments Fri, 09 Apr 2010 19:19:34 +0000 HeySal http://rockhoundstation1.net/wp/?p=51 Hi Everyone. 

I want to remind everyone to get their BEST pictures of their most awesome finds ready.   On  June 1st  we will start our CALENDAR PICTURE CONTEST.   The 13 pictures with the most votes will be featured in the 2011 Gem Hunter’s Showcase Calendar.  The Picture with the most votes will be featured on the cover.

Each picture will include a caption with the finder’s name, the region the stone was located, and any contact information – such as shop names and locations and/or websites that the winner would like to have included.  Free advertising and some high test bragging rights for those of you finding the most awesome gems and taking great photos.

Please do make sure that the pictures you send are of gems that YOU find.  RHS1 is not responsible for plagiarized  material. If you use someone else’s pictures or info and get caught doing so, it will be YOU that is responsible, not RHS1.   I’m pretty sure our rockhound community is above this kind of thing, but legally – I have to put up this statement, so here it is.

TO ENTER THE CONTEST
1. You must be a member of RHS1 to participate in this contest.  Registration is free – membership is always free. Make sure to put us in your email so your confirmation doesn’t go to your spam folder.  If you have difficulties registering,  just drop me a line and I will activate you myself.

2. Send your picture  to us via the “contact US” button by June 1st, 2010.  Include your username,  the name of the mineral specimen, and what region you found it in.    We will accept 2 pictures from each contestant.

Pictures will be posted on the Photo Gallery on June 1st  with instructions about how to vote.  Voting will continue until the last day of August 2010 – On September 1st  we will announce the winners.

HAVE A ROCK SHOW COMING UP IN 2011?  STAY TUNED FOR INFORMATION ABOUT HOW TO HAVE YOUR SHOW LISTED ON THE CALENDAR so nobody will forget to visit your show!

I’m looking forward to some spectacular pictures this year!

For any of you who used to be members before the crash, the forums and photo gallery are back online, too, and some of our old pals are already back and waiting for the rest of you.  In fact a few of us already have a spring trip already in the planning, so you have a lot to catch up on.  We’ve got members coming in from all over so come on in.  You might just meet a great rock hunting pal here. I have – lots of them.

Now if ya hit the front page of the forum you’ve already seen that we have our first annual calendar out for 2010.  This year we can thank current members for the awesome pictures.  Around June there will be a contest to decide the 2011 pics so members need to start getting their best specimens ever dug up and ready for the show down.  Details will be online when the time for the contest gets near.

You can find that calendar right HERE

And of course, last but by far not the least – the photo gallery is online again, too, and there are members in there already stocking it with pics that will make you want to drop everything except a snow shovel and get back out into the fields.  Of course, for those of us up here in the North about all we can do is talk about that one for awhile, but you in the South have your chance to make us sick about the weather for a few months.  Don’t be too harsh – spring isn’t that far off and pabacks are……..well, you know.

I’d like to make mention of our site vendors – BlackCatMining.com and Wire-sculpture.com who are bringing you all  the rockhound and jewerly making equipment and supplies you need to keep your hobbies, crafts and businesses running smoothly.  And just to keep  the FTC  cozy and warm – yes, we do get small commissions to help support RHS1.

Once you get your own rocks and products to sell,  you can stop by at Dragonsayeauctions.com and put those beauties online for sale – you’ll find em on the right side of the front page as always.

If you haven’t noticed yet, the RHS1 Connector newsletter is also back up and in full swing.  This month you’ll find a free ebook to download about Lake Superior Agates from John Marshall.  He really put together an awesome piece of work there and you are just missing out if you don’t grab a copy.  Free is one heck of a good price, especially for a work this well done.  (Don’t worry if you hate to read, the pictures are quite enough to tide you over!).

You can find that newsletter right HERE

Well, for now I think that’s about it.  Looking forward to seeing you all back in the forums again.  Keep your eye on the Gazette, too, though – ya never know what we’ll be talking about here.

Until next time……

Life’s Short Rock Hard

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