Why japan suffers earthquakes

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Fault planes that cause earthquakes usually adhere through friction, but if additional energy from the surrounding plates exceeds the frictional force, it causes a disruption along the fault plane. The Pacific Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate are sinking directly below the Japanese archipelago, and the movements of these plates are the main cause of earthquakes across the archipelago see figure 1. Earthquakes can be categorized into three types. Plate-boundary quakes occur when sinking oceanic plates rub against the plates above.

In contrast, intraslab earthquakes occur within sinking oceanic plates, while inland earthquakes occur at active inland faults. Plate-boundary earthquakes have a maximum magnitude of 8 to 9. Inland earthquakes, which include the Great Hanshin-Awaji Kobe Earthquake, are smaller than plate-boundary earthquakes, but are destructive because they occur at a relatively shallow depth of 15 kilometers or less.

Inland earthquakes often strike with the reactivation of old fault planes. The Japanese archipelago, originally part of the Eurasian continent, was formed when it broke off from the continent around 20 million years ago, giving birth to the Sea of Japan. Earthquakes occur repeatedly in certain locations, but the interval between them is decades to centuries in the case of plate-boundary quakes and thousands of years or more for inland quakes. But Japan suffers frequent earthquakes because there are so many sources where they can be triggered.

Seismic observation has a longer history in Japan than almost anywhere else. This led to the development of the seismograph. Later, in the s, Japan significantly expanded its observation network under its national earthquake prediction program. These have markedly improved our capability to observe micro-earthquakes, lowering the minimum threshold of detectability to 0. No one can predict that. Follow Denise Chow on Twitter denisechow.

Original article on Live Science. Before joining the Live Science team in , she spent two years as a staff writer for Space. A Canadian transplant, Denise has a bachelor's degree from the University of Toronto, and a master's degree in journalism from New York University.

Live Science. And fourth, Japan is located in the circum-Pacific zone, in which almost all the volcanoes of the world are concentrated, and has 83 active volcanoes-one-tenth of the world total. The Ise Bay Typhoon of September killed. It prompted the establishment of a planned and comprehensive disaster prevention administration system, and in the Disaster Countermeasures Basic Act was enacted.