Group Project: Recent Earthquakes and Active Volcanoes

1. Describe the relationship between the plate locations and the locations of the earthquakes and volcanoes. Explain why this relationship exists.

Earthquakes and volcanoes are caused by the shifting of the Earth’s tectonic plates, which are chunks of the planet's surface that are able to move about on their own. When these tectonic plates collide with each other, a convergent plate boundary is formed, and whenever these boundaries are crossed, the resulting action forms either an earthquake or a volcano. When one plate descends on top of another through a process known as subduction, they form vibrations on the surface of the planet that forms a volcano on the planet's surface. Pockets of magma stuffed beneath two tectonic plates are released as the plates move apart from each other, creating lava on to the surface that becomes the base of a volcano. Likewise, a shifting plate that grinds on another one forms an earthquake around the whole area.

Because these events are so localized and so securely confined to one specific spot on a plate boundary, the location of most volcanoes and earthquakes can be pinpointed to exact areas where they are most likely to happen. This is the way that the world works, the earth moving back and forth due to these plates colliding with each other horizontally causes the continents to change their positions to where their plates stand, a process that slowly occurs over time. The highest percentage of earthquakes occur on the fault lines of these tectonic plates, and can be traced to an area where they appear most frequently because that area contains the most shifting in between two different plates.

2. Compare the locations of the earthquakes and volcanoes to the locations that have high population densities. Describe how earthquakes and volcanoes affect humans and how they can impact the environment.

Some areas of the planet, such as Japan and many different islands on the coast of China, suffer from large scale volcanic activity, but it's the overpopulated places that really have to worry about. Sometimes, an entire section of the country can be affected by these massive earthquake and volcanic attacks, like certain parts of South America and Asia. Not only that, but the San Francisco area is noted for it's regular earthquakes, and some cities in Europe haven't gotten along too easily either.
When a volcano erupts, it releases clouds of smoke and dust in the air, so any local town or nearby city feels the full effect of the blast of chemical and particle residue. This can clog up drains, blacken the sky, and cause massive widespread sickness due to breathing all this gas and smoke in.

When an earthquake occurs underwater, tsunamis can form and cause devastation to the nearby places.The earthquakes themselves have also left many towns in ruin, a mess for people to clean up, and have destroyed many important buildings and houses necessary for human living space. Not only that, but the residue from the massive tremors can also lead to spreading disease and illnesses from the amount of waste that has been left behind in their wake.

As a population, we as humans must create evacuation plans and find some way to protect the general population from these dangerous events, otherwise more people will suffer as they have in the past.