There has been a recent flurry of earthquake activity in the Oceania region. Whilst there is little unusual about this, it does allow us to highlight one of the tools available within the Intute World Guide: Natural Hazards pages.
Real-time earthquake monitoring is provided by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and their regularly-updated maps are embedded into our service pages. These clickable maps display the latest quakes around the globe; clicking on a region highlights the activity in that area, and each individual quake has a wealth of data viewable.
The screenshot below, taken at 12.30pm today, shows a new quake of magnitude 5.0 centred in Papua, Indonesia (the red square). To view the embedded service, please visit the Intute World Guide: Natural Hazards: Earthquake Monitoring pages.
Spot the latest quake!
Educational Resources says: December 10, 2009 @ 4:29 pm
Recent research has looked at the use of seamounts to locate hotspots and investigate absolute plate motions. It was possible to use a ‘hot-spotting’ method which brings together the geometry of plate tectonics and the computational power of digital sea-floor topography. This technique has the potential for being used extensively in determining which seamounts were produced by hotspots. It could also produce new information about the history of absolute plate motions and allow the issue of whether hotspots are fixed with respect to one another to be resolved.
Read more: http://www.faqs.org/abstracts/Zoology-and-wildlife-conservation/Hot-spotting-in-the-Pacific-A-model-for-the-global-variation-in-oceanic-depth-and-heat-flow-with-lit.html#ixzz0ZIukgVWz