First, look at the worldwide distribution of earthquakes, and examine how they are tied to the movement of the Earth's tectonic plates.  Go to the National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) map of World Earthquakes (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww).

1. How many earthquakes with M 2.5+ occurred in the past 7 days? (Latest Earthquakes Magnitude 2.5 or Greater in the United States and Adjacent Areas and Magnitude 4.5 or Greater in the Rest of the World )

    

2. What do the different sizes of the squares refer to?

3. What do the different colors of the squares refer to?

4. When was the map last updated? Give date and time in UTC. (UTC is Coordinated Universal Time):

5. Give date and time in local, Eastern Daylight Savings time (click on UTC time to get local time):

Go to the Recent Earthquakes: Last 8-30 Days map (http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/qed/).   On this map, the plate boundaries are shown in yellow.  

6. How do the plate boundaries match up with the distribution of earthquakes?

7. What does this tell you about one of the possible causes of earthquakes?

8. What do the different colors on this map mean?

Go to the Latest Earthquakes in the World—Past 7 days.   Scroll down the list and find the most recent earthquake.  (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/quakes_all.php). 

9. When (UTC DATE-TIME):         ___________________________________

10. Location description:                  ___________________________________

11. Latitude:                                    ___________________________________

12. Longitude                                  ___________________________________

13. What was the magnitude of this earthquake?        ___________________

14. What is the approximate depth of this earthquake?           ___________________

Scroll down the list and find the largest magnitude earthquake.  When and where was the largest earthquake?

15. When:                                       ___________________________________

16. Location description:                  ___________________________________

17. Latitude:                                    ___________________________________

18. Longitude                                  ___________________________________

19.  What was the magnitude of the largest earthquake?                   ___________________

20. What is the approximate depth of the largest earthquake?            ___________________

Click on the date-time link of this largest earthquake.  The link will take you to more details of the earthquake.  Now click on the Maps tab; then click on the Historical Seismicity tab. 

21. What are the colors for shallow earthquakes(0-70km)? ____________   What are the colors for intermediate (70-300km)?__________.   What are the colors for deep (300-800km)? _______________

22. Describe any pattern to the distribution of depths of the earthquakes

23. What is the plate tectonic setting of this earthquake? If it is near a plate boundary, is it a convergent, divergent, or transform boundary?  

Go to Latest  Earthquakes in the USA—Past 7 days  (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus)

Were there any earthquakes in the Eastern US (east of the Mississippi River ) in the last week?

24. If there were, list the states where the earthquakes occurred, and the approximate number of earthquakes in 
    each state.

25. Where was the largest magnitude earthquake?

Look at the map of Seismicity of the United States, 1977-1997 (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/states/seismicity/)

26. What is the depth of almost all the earthquakes in California ?  _______________
    Explain why: 

27. Scroll down to Alaska . What patterns of changes in earthquake depths do you observe? Explain why:

28. Go to Florida Earthquake History  (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/regional/states/florida/history.php) and summarize how earthquakes have affected Florida .