A devastating earthquake struck Morocco, resulting in significant casualties and damage.
Details of the Moroccan Earthquake
- Shallow Epicenter: The earthquake’s epicentre occurred about 70 kilometres southwest of Marrakech, close to the village of Ighil. With different depth estimations, it was thought to be relatively shallow.
- Higher Energy: Compared to deeper quakes, shallow earthquakes are usually more deadly since they are more energetic.
Major Causes
- Tectonic convergence: An intricate plate boundary that connected the African and Eurasian tectonic plates in a northward convergence caused the earthquake.
- The Moroccan High Atlas Mountain range’s oblique-reverse faulting at a shallow depth was the cause of the earthquake, according to the USGS.
- Classification of Faults Oblique-slip faults, which develop in regions of compression when tectonic plates converge, have traits of both dip-slip and strike-slip faults.
What is an Earthquake?
- An earthquake is a severe shaking of the ground brought on by underground movement.
- It occurs when two earthen bricks unexpectedly slip past one another.
- This causes seismic waves, which propagate through the earth and cause the ground to tremble, to be released as “elastic strain” energy.
What exactly causes Earthquakes?
- As we all know, the crust of the earth is broken up into tectonic plates.
- Plate borders, which are composed of faults, are the edges of the plates.
- The tectonic plates continuously travel slowly past one another and collide with one another.
- The plates’ rough edges cause them to become glued to one another while the rest of the plate continues to move.
- When the plate has shifted sufficiently, and one of the faults’ edges is unstuck, an earthquake occurs.
- The epicentre, which is located just above the hypocenter on the earth’s surface, is where the earthquake begins, which is located below the surface of the planet.
