Reflection: Tracking Earthquakes and Volcanoes
When beginning this project, I hadn't used Google Earth for much. I had looked for my house, but that as far as I went. Google Earth is amazing. It was so fascinating to look at our world from an aerial viewpoint. I struggle with direction in all cases, but especially when it comes to differentiating between countries on Earth. This viewpoint helped me so much.
To start locating earthquakes, I pulled up Google Earth and immediately looked for the Pacific Coast because the book tells us that is where most earthquakes happen in the United States. The first one I found was around the Canada Region. I wanted an earthquake that had happened recently and this one was just a few days earlier (February 9, 2014). It also had a magnitude higher than 4.0 so it was my chosen Earthquake for divergent boundaries. My next earthquake happened March 4, 2014 in central Alaska. It had a magnitude of 4.5. and was along oceanic-oceanic boundaries. My third earthquake was I then started researching the basic type of tectonic plate boundary. I used the textbook for this part of the assignment. I had read the chapter on plate tectonics, but my research helped me understand them further. Zooming in on the earthquake marker was fun. I could see waves of the ocean in the picture. Simple things entertain me. I then put all my information together for my e-portfolio.
Locating several volcanoes was interesting too. I had to make sure I had the right types of volcano and that was tricky. A composite volcano was the most difficult to find. I was amazed at how many volcanoes there were. Once I found the type I was looking for, I did further research on each one and the tectonic plate type. Zooming in on each volcano was very cool. My favorite image is of Dempo. It was like I was standing right there on top of it.
I am grateful to all the scientists and specialists that keep the research and information current for us to explore. I have not appreciated this technology before, but I will continue to explore our world in this manner.
Before this course I had no idea what the science behind earthquakes was. Living in Utah my whole life, I have heard and learned about earthquakes, but not at this level. My understanding now has me even more nervous of when "the big one" will hit our state. I know technology continues to improve and I hope it will help us survive when an earthquake finally hits Utah.
So far this has been a much more interesting course than I expected. The textbook is in depth, but the information is broken down enough that I understand what I read. It has taught me to be more aware of my surroundings and do my part in helping to prevent natural disasters.
