This chapter will help you understand the nature and origin of earthquakes. We discuss the seismic waves created by earthquakes and how the quakes are measured and located by studying these waves. We also describe some effects of earthquakes, such as ground motion and displacement, damage to buildings, and quake-caused fires, landslides, and tsunamis.
Earthquakes are largely confined to a few narrow belts on Earth. This distribution was once puzzling to geologists, but here we show how the concept of plate tectonics neatly explains it.
As geologists learn more about earthquake behavior, there is the possibility that we will be able to forecast earthquakes. We conclude the chapter with a look at this developing branch of Earth study.
