Relation to Subduction Slope and Plate Speed
Angie I
The purpose of this experiment is to determine the relationship between the depths of earthquakes with respect to how the plates will move and how much, in a subduction zone. If the slopes are steeper in the subduction zone, the plates in the subduction zone will probably move more. If the slope is not steep, then the plates will move less.
To try and prove this, depths of earthquakes were taken from different trenches. The deeper the earthquake the more the plates would move. The trenches that were observed were the Japan Trench, Fiji Trench, Peru-Chile Trench, Java Trench, and Aleutian Trench. The earthquakes there were graphed to find the slopes of each. The slopes ranged from –140 to –38. After that, the speed of each trench was recorded. The speeds were compared to the slopes and the R2 was found. This gave the relationship of the two. It turned out that there wasn’t a strong relationship of .5908.
Since the relationship between the slope of earthquakes and the speeds of the plates isn’t very strong, the hypothesis wasn’t correct. The Peru-Chile Trench has earthquakes with depths close to 700 kilometers. This plate moved at 106 mm a-1. In this location the hypothesis was correct. However, not all the earthquakes proved the hypothesis correct.
Since the relationship wasn’t very strong, there must be something else affecting the speeds of the earthquakes. It was thought that something was pulling it but it could be that something was pushing it.
This project was awarded a Meritorious