The most seismic and earthquake-prone regions Russia are those that are part of the so-called Pacific ring, primarily the Kuriles and Kamchatka. This was stated in a conversation with Lenta.ru by the Deputy Director for Engineering Seismology and Seismic Hazard Assessment of the Institute of Physics of the Earth RAS Ruben Tatevosyan.
According to him, high activity, albeit to a lesser extent, is observed on Altai and in the Baikal rift zone. At the same time, seismic activity on their territory does not depend on the situation in the world. “All major seismically active regions show a consistently high level of activity, and significant changes in the spatial distribution of earthquakes around the planet after an earthquake in Turkey did not happen,” Tatevosyan said.
Earthquakes can also start in Central Russia, but after millions of years
Tatevosyan explained that there is a concept of “Evolution of the Earth”, in connection with which the spatial distribution of earthquakes can change. The situation will depend on the balance of the rate of formation and destruction of the earth’s crust. It is impossible to predict this at the moment.
“The time scales of these changes are not comparable not only with the life of one person, but of humanity as a whole – we are talking about many millions of years. It is impossible to build models that will show exactly what will happen during this time, ”he said.
Predicting powerful earthquakes is almost impossible
As Tatevosyan explained, at the moment a system of sufficiently reliable earthquake forecasts has not been developed. He noted that the quality of construction largely provides protection against earthquakes.
At the same time, the seismologist noted that catastrophic earthquakes rarely occur. “At least 90 percent of earthquakes that occur on Earth are noticed only by sensitive instruments installed at seismic stations, and people do not feel them at all,” he said.
On February 6, earthquakes of magnitude 7.7 and 7.6 occurred in the central part of Turkey. Tremors have become the most powerful in the country over the past 84 years. As a result, more than 45 thousand people died, another 100 thousand were injured. The earthquake also affected Syria Over 8,000 people died there. After the earthquake in Turkey, reports of tremors in Russia have become more frequent. Seismological activity was mainly reported in Kamchatka and the Kuriles, but seismologists explained that this is typical for this region. Tatevosyan is of the same opinion. According to him, the earthquakes that occurred in Russia are not related to the events in Turkey and Syria.
