Students worked on an analysis of the aftershock patterns following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake along the coast of northern Honshu, Japan. The activity included a Gutenberg-Richter analysis of the distribution of magnitudes in the aftershock sequence, and I an exploration of Omori’s Law, which shows the distribution of earthquakes as a function of time following the main shock. The 2011 Tohoku earthquake was unusual in that it also had a large foreshock, magnitude 7, and the sequence associated with that event that continued right up to the initiation of the magnitude 9.0 mainshock. The largest aftershock, a magnitude 8, occurred about 30 minutes after the main shock near the southern end of the rupture.

While working on the Tohoku earthquake analysis, we began our exploration of tsunami with a 25-minute video from a coastal community (Kesennuma City, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan) in eastern Honshu, Japan that was struck hard by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake’s tsunami. An important point made with the the long video is the length of time during which water can surge in during a tsunami. Most of the newsclips that you see following the earthquake are short and dramatic, but don’t communicate well how long the water may just surge into a coastal region. You can see images of the aftermath by googling “images: kesennuma city tsunami 2011”.

Link to Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8qFi74k2UE