yawavi92 / project-1-earthquake-analysis-1

project-1-earthquake-analysis

Project Description

Restrictions

1. Magnitudes of 5 or greater - this is where structural damage begins to occur and they are commonly felt by people
2. 1990 - 2021 - only the last 30 years were tracked due to the vast number of earthquakes that occur each year
3. Region - we limited the regions of analysis to North America, South America, and the South Pacific to keep it relevant to American Corporations

Questions

1. Have Earthquakes increased in Magnitude since 1990?

2. Are Earthquakes occurring more frequently since 1990?

3. Where are Earthquakes most likely to occur?

Regions Analyzed

North America Latitudes -> 15 to 80 Longitudes -> -45 to -170

South America Latitudes -> -55 to -15 Longitudes -> -25 to -75

South Pacific Latitudes -> -70 to 10 Longitudes -> -75 to -180

Earthquake Background

Magnitude Description Effects Occurrences 1990-2021 5-5.9 Moderate Slight Damage Chance 13,299 6-6.9 Strong Moderate Damage Chance 1271 7-7.9 Major Great Damage Chance 115 8+ Great Major Damage or Destruction 14

Procedures

API

We utilized the Earthquake Catalogs API to retrive the Magnitude, Latitude, Longitude, and Timestamp data for the given parameters (starttime, endtime, minimum magnitude, latitude range, and longitude range)

https://earthquake.usgs.gov/fdsnws/event/1/?ref=springboard

Pandas

After this data was retrieved we utlized Pandas Data Frames to clean , group by year, bin by severity, count, and average the data

Plotting

Using Matplotlib and Pandas we were able to create several plots, graphs, and series to analyze the data

Google Maps

We utilized Google Maps API to create a Heat Map that helped to show where Earthquakes are most likely to occur

Analysis

Plots are avaiable in the Slide Deck and images folder

Average Earthquake Magnitude from 1990-2021

Average Earthquake Magnitude appears to decrease from 1990 to 2021 but after further investigation this is due to the increased number of 5-6 Magnitude Earthquakes and that is shown in the Magnitude 6 and greater plots

Earthquakes Per Year from 1990-2020

The number of Earthquakes per Yerar has increased from 1990 to 2020 and that is mainky due to the increase in 5-6 Magnitude Earthquakes

Earthquake Locations

As expected, Earthquakes are most likely to take place along Fault Lines and Tectonic Plate edges. In our research these primarily occurred along the Pacific, Carribean, Nazca, and Cocos Plates