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Earthquake

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Encyclopedia of Marine Geosciences

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Synonyms

Seismic event

Definition

The term earthquake describes ground shaking and radiation of seismic energy, which is caused, e.g., by slip on a fault, magmatic activity, or cavity collapse.

Introduction

Earthquakes are events of seismic ground shaking caused, e.g., by the release of elastic stress accumulated along a previously locked fault zone (Fig. 1), by magmatic activity, or by the collapse of caves. Further, human activity such as mining and hydrocarbon exploitation, underground nuclear explosions, geothermal fluid injection, or rapid water level changes in dam lakes may cause earthquakes. Mostly, stress release occurs suddenly and unpredicted. In the case of large earthquakes, ground shaking may be considerable and cause devastation and fatalities.

Fig. 1
figure 1

(a) Hypocenter position and rupture propagation along a fault. The epicenter is directly located above the hypocenter from where the rupture initiates. (b) Seismogram of a near earthquake recorded by the Thuringian Seismic...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Geowissenschaften, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität, Burgweg 11, 07749, Jena, Germany

    Prof. Dr. Nina Kukowski

Authors
  1. Prof. Dr. Nina Kukowski
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Correspondence to Nina Kukowski .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, University of Szczecin, Szczecin, Poland

    Jan Harff

  2. Institute of Geography and Geology, University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

    Martin Meschede

  3. Leibiniz Institute of Marine Sciences, University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany

    Sven Petersen

  4. Academy of Sciences, Humanities, and Lit c/o Helmholtz-Center for Ocean Research, Kiel, Germany

    Jörn Thiede

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Kukowski, N. (2014). Earthquake. In: Harff, J., Meschede, M., Petersen, S., Thiede, J. (eds) Encyclopedia of Marine Geosciences. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6644-0_106-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6644-0_106-1

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