3. Our Map The pink dots represent the earthquakes that have occurred in the last year, and the blue dots represent significant/big earthquakes.

5. What have you learned about earthquakes and earthquake prediction? We have learned that earthquakes are very deadly, destructive natural disasters, and are extremely hard to predict. They occur all over the world and not every earthquake is felt, it depends on their strength. Earthquakes’ strengths are determined on a scale from 0-10 called the Richter scale. They generally have to measure around 7.0 in order to be felt. Earth’s crust is continuously forming, deforming, pushed and pulled. Enough strain builds up on the crust and it is released causing wild shakes, an earthquake occurs. Earthquakes generally occur along or around the different types of plate boundaries. If you look at the previous map, almost every country with a lot of seismic activity lies on one type of boundary. Earthquake prediction is improving today. While it seems like earthquakes strike suddenly, scientists are trying to develop new technologies that can help spot and detect them sooner. At the moment, scientists are unable to develop the exact location, time, or strength of earthquakes, but based on plate boundaries and past earthquakes, they can make rough predictions on what places are in danger. Scientists are developing methods using different types of satellites, such as the Interferometric-Synthetic Aperture Radar, which takes pictures of tectonic plates from space to detect ground movement. Also, infrared radiation which detects spikes in ground temperature is another tool. They are also using seismographs which are instruments that measure ground movements along with seismic waves. These are three of the more common methods. Picture Taken from a satellite of the ground movement