Earthquake!

So I felt my first earthquake yesterday. I was sitting in the office working and all of a sudden we felt the building shaking slightly. During the earthquake, P' Aoy (the office assistant) and I looked at each other to confirm that it wasn't just us who felt the vibration. Soon after, a bunch of students came down and were asking about it since they felt the earthquake too. We got online to the USGS site and were able to find the epicenter. It turns out that the quake was centered around a point in northern Laos, north of Thailand and south of China. I figure that the epicenter was roughly 300 km from Lampang. Within an hour, the USGS website had information about the quake and said that the quake had a magnitude of 6.3. While looking, I came across some neat graphics that they have created and thought that I would show them as well. I'll think I actually use these graphics this year when I teach plate tectonics again in the winter. But here is some more of the information that I found.

Here is a map of where the quake was. If you see the dark green area towards the bottom of the map, look halfway between the top of that area and Chiang Mai and that's about where I am.This next map shows the vibrations from the quake. You can see the where the epicenter is and the vibrations radiate out from there. Lampang is marked on this map and you can see that it shows light vibrations in and around Lampang. This last map I found to be really interesting. It shows the fault lines in the area as well as the location and magnitude of all of the earthquakes in the past 10 years. Very interesting.

And that's that. I've now experienced an earthquake and have learned a bit more about what the USGS does.

One very interesting last tidbit before I go - all of this information was recorded and complied by U.S. Geological Survey, National Earthquake Information Center World Data Center for Seismology located in none other than Denver, Colorado, USA. Yet another example of just how small the world can be. Pretty darn spiffy if you ask me.

Peace,

RM

(all images were taken from the USGS website http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2007ckan.php#maps).