Visualising the New Zealand earthquake

New Zealand is very active for eathquakes and vulcanism, unlike its bigger brother Australia, which is perhaps the most tectonically stable piece of crust floating around anywhere on this ball of magma. Thats because NZ sits atop the place where the Pacific ocean floor dives down under the aforementioned Australian plate. On September 4th there was a big slip around Christchurch, resulting in an eathquake measured at 7.4 in magnitude, which damaged hundreds of buildings and was felt all over New Zealand. Chris McDowall is a kiwi informatician who assembled 6 months of NZ earthquake activity into a cool data visualisation that shows just how common it is for the ground to move down there. Each earthquake appears as a purple blob, of intensity matched to the magnitude of the temblor, leaving a little red mark behind to show the accumulation over time. I was struck by how much of the activity is concentrated in two parallel lines running southwest-northeast on the north island. When the Christchurch quake hits the middle of the south island it just seems so big and out of place. Anyway, its a great bit of data visualisation and I thought you might like it too. Via my colleague Malcolm Bowman at Stony Brook U.

Visualising six months of New Zealand earthquake data (Apr 1 - Sep 7, 2010) from Chris McDowall on Vimeo.