Earthquakes

The National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) collects and publishes data of all the earthquakes occuring around the earth. The data set visualized on this page contains all the earthquakes between 1965 and 2016 that had a magnitude higher than 5.5 on the Richter scale.

Most earthquakes align with the tectonic boundaries. Based on the earthquake magnitudes at these locations one can also clearly identify the different types of tectonic boundaries that occur. For example, the extremely active zone along the western coast of South America can be explained by the converging boundary formed by the Nazca and South American plate.

Run the animation and look at the earthquakes for each individual year or display a custom selection of years.