What type of earthquake was japan 2011

Explore these resources to teach your students about catastrophic weather events and how they impact every part of the world. Explore major magnitude of 7. Explore the earthquakes occurring in the last 30 days and the extent of their shaking with this map layer. Join our community of educators and receive the latest information on National Geographic's resources for you and your students.

Skip to content. Twitter Facebook Pinterest Google Classroom. Background Info Vocabulary. Links map Click below to see a MapMaker Interactive map displaying tectonic activity surrounding the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Select Text Level: Educator Family. On March 11, , Japan experienced the strongest earthquake in its recorded history. The earthquake struck below the North Pacific Ocean, kilometers 81 miles east of Sendai, the largest city in the Tohoku region, a northern part of the island of Honshu.

The Tohoku earthquake caused a tsunami. Most tsunamis, like the one that formed off Tohoku, are triggered by underwater tectonic activity , such as earthquakes and volcanic eruption s. The Tohoku tsunami produced waves up to 40 meters feet high,. More than , people became homeless as a result of the tsunami. More than 15, people died. The tsunami also severely cripple d the infrastructure of the country.

In addition to the thousands of destroyed homes, businesses, roads, and railways, the tsunami caused the meltdown of three nuclear reactor s at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The Fukushima nuclear disaster released toxic , radioactive materials into the environment and forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes and businesses. More Dates in History January.

The Japan Trench Fast Drilling project enabled researchers to get out to the fault zone about a year after the earthquake and drop instruments down to measure temperature anomalies—the sudden slips during an earthquake can generate vast amounts of heat—and to bring up samples of the fault zone itself for analysis.

Experts were able to take core samples of sediment and rock from the trench—located in 23, feet 7, meters of water—thanks to a sophisticated drilling ship. Not only did they find evidence of this thin layer of lubricating clay, but experts were also able calculate how much heat and friction was involved. It's difficult to say whether something like this could happen elsewhere, said Wang, because no other submarine trench has as many instruments monitoring it. All rights reserved. This helped confirm the fact that something else was going on—namely the clay lubrication.

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Animals Wild Cities Morocco has 3 million stray dogs. The epicenter of the quake was in an unusual spot , about kilometers east of Sendai, Japan, just off the northern coast of that nation. In this area, a subduction zone, the Pacific plate is diving beneath the Eurasian plate. The epicenter of Tohoku-Oki earthquake was off the east coast of northern Japan. Image via USGS. A little over a year after the earthquake, the deep sea drilling vessel Chikyu was tasked with the mission to drill into the fault off the Japanese coast and install a temperature observatory.

Once you do, the ski's movement generates heat and it takes much less force to continue the movement…. The same thing happens with an earthquake. Getting that temperature measurement was tricky.