Morocco was the victim of a terrible earthquake that caused extensive casualties and destruction.
Specifics of the Moroccan earthquake
- Shallow epicentre: The epicentre of the earthquake occurred around 70 km 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 Factors
- 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.
Why talk about this?
- Low Seismicity: Due to the low seismicity rates around the northern edge of the continent, earthquakes are uncommon in North Africa.
- Historical Potency: This earthquake, which caught Morocco off guard, was the strongest ever recorded in the mountainous area.
- Construction flaws: A lot of Moroccan buildings, particularly those in rural and older cities, are not made to survive powerful tremors.
An earthquake is what?
- 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 specifically triggers 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 unsticks, 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.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/08/africa/morocco-6-8-magnitude-earthquake-intl-hnk/index.html