The Depth of Earthquakes

This map of world seismicity illustrates 5 years of earthquakes. Most of the plate boundaries are illuminated, along with diffuse regions of seismicity, such as in central Asia. This Web page is designed to provide some sense of the depth distribution of earthquakes. in this figure, the different colors indicate the different depths at which these earthquakes have occurred: You can see the distribution of these earthquakes with depth at any of the regions marked in blue. Either click in the box or see the table below.

For each figure, a close-up view of the particular region is provided. The area of the cross-section is marked in green, with the end points a and b identified. Below the map view is the cross-section plot. These figures plot the depth of the earthquake along the projected line. The final figure is a histogram of the number of earthquakes as a function of depth from the cross section.

Selected Depth Cross-Sections
South America Tonga Japan Alaska