Georgia Southern University explains the recent Georgia earthquake

June 24, 2022

On average, dozens of earthquakes occur each day, according to the USGS. They can strike anywhere, anytime. Most of them are not felt by most people, but they are detected by seismographs all over the world. Southeast Georgia saw one on June 18. The 3.9-magnitude earthquake was the most powerful earthquake in the state in years.

Some people reported feeling it, but most fell asleep during the seismic event without knowing it until they woke up to push alerts on their phones. Three earthquakes were reported in the state in less than a week, raising questions about the nature of earthquakes in Georgia.

James Richard, PhD, a professor of geology in South Georgia, has been talking to the media about why it’s happening and what it can tell us about the state we live in. He described the earthquake as “small,” but said it showed a pattern of tectonic activity in the area. Here are his answers to some key questions about earthquakes.

What caused the earthquake?

Earthquakes occur due to the buildup of pressure in the Earth’s crust. A good example is comparing it to a stick. If you bend a thin branch too far, it breaks. Rocks do the same. If you have some kind of force, just as if you’re hitting a stick, the rocks in the ground bend. It is flexible and will continue to bend and deform until it reaches the point of rupture. When it ruptures, the stored energy is released and that’s when the earthquake occurs.

Earthquakes usually occur near the edges of tectonic plates. Why did this happen here?

We sit on a coastal plain, which is layers of flat sedimentary rocks on top of ancient crustal rocks. And beneath us are these ancient faults buried behind when the North American and African plates began to split.

We had this huge mountain range from 250 million years ago, which we today call the Appalachians, and then the tectonic plates reversed and started to rupture. This is called a “rift,” and it has caused large faults to run parallel to the mountain range. In the end, the crack widened enough to overflow. That’s what made the Atlantic.

What are the methods used to measure earthquakes? What do the measurements tell us?

We use the Richter scale to measure the strength of an earthquake. The numbers used are actually the exponents representing orders of magnitude. An earthquake measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale is 10 times stronger than 4.0 and 100 times stronger than 3.0. If you are over the age of five, the earthquakes will start to become more noticeable and you will have more damage. Then there are the large companies with a power of more than 9.0 in Japan and Indonesia. So these are really big events.

Before seismographs, there is another instrument that runs from 1 to 12 called the Mercalli Intensity Scale. It was basically a survey of the damage and what people felt. This is the yardstick that people can relate to.

What do we know about the earthquake that occurred at the weekend? What information do you look for after an earthquake?

When an earthquake occurs, look at its size because that tells us how much energy was released as the rocks ruptured. Think of it as a small firework versus a 500-pound bomb. The more powerful the explosion you have, the more energy will be released. We had a 3.9 on the Richter scale. This is small.

The other element is how deep it is. If a bomb went off, where wouldn’t you want to sit? You don’t want to sit near him. You want to sit as far away as possible. For an earthquake: the deeper it is, the less damage it will do to the surface. If you look at an earthquake and it’s 20 miles deep against 100, that says a lot.

One event over the weekend was less than a mile from the crust in Miter, Georgia. It was really shallow. This is one of the reasons we feel it more. Although it was small in size, it was so close to the surface that it was more noticeable than if the same size occurred at a depth of ten miles. There is still an earthquake, but how close you are to it. Make a big difference.

Is there a way to know how dangerous an earthquake will be in the future?

Not right. What we can do is look into the past. We know there was a magnitude 7.3 earthquake in Charleston in 1886, and we know what the shaking is here. That’s all we can prepare for is a similar thing, because it happened in the past. This doesn’t mean you can’t have a bigger one, but the best answer is that we use the past.

Are earthquakes becoming more frequent?

No, but we have to keep in mind that we’re talking about things that happen over geologic time. A million years is a short period in terms of geology. We’ve been measuring these things for a few hundred years. Therefore, we have a very small window and it is very difficult to make statistics when the frequency is very low. For the West Coast, the frequency of earthquakes is so high that we can make some projections, but the situation is completely different.

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