Lesson video

Hi there.

I'm Ms. Roberts and I'll be your geography teacher today.

Thank you for choosing to come and join me for this lesson where we will be using digital maps to identify earthquake patterns around the world.

The digital maps that we will be using are part of an online digital system called a GIS.

By the end of the lesson today, you are going to be able to use a GIS to see patterns about where earthquakes occur in the world and you'll be able to predict their likely impacts.

Are you excited and ready to get started? Me too.

Let's go.

We're going to begin by looking at these keywords for our lesson.

These keywords are important for you to know, because you will hear them a lot.

But what's more important is that I would really like you to be able to start using these words yourself.

Our first keyword is GIS.

GIS stands for geographic information system.

A GIS is an online set of data.

It contains digital maps that allow us to see and understand geographical patterns.

Our next keyword is plate boundary.

A plate boundary is the place where two or more tectonic plates meet.

And then our third keyword is layer.

Now a layer is part of a GIS.

It's an extra piece of information or data that we add to a digital map.

So we layer that information on top of the base map that we already have.

There are two parts to today's lesson.

First of all, we're going to think about how a GIS can show us those patterns.

How can a GIS show us earthquake patterns? And then second half of the lesson, we'll be thinking about how a GIS can show us the likely impact of earthquakes happening.

So let's make a start now and think about earthquake patterns around the world.

Think about this question.

Are there places around the world where big earthquakes are more common than other places? What do you think? Perhaps you had ideas like Lucas.

Lucas says that he thinks that many places like California in the USA are at more risk than here in the UK of earthquakes.

I wonder if Lucas is right and I wonder whether we can use a GIS to help us find out.

Geographers can use a GIS to investigate and discover lots of information.

We can use it to compare places around the world and that helps us to understand them better.

This is a screenshot from a GIS called the Geography Visualiser, which is a free-to-access online GIS that we will use today.

On this screenshot, you can see that we have a base map of the world and the layer that's been added to it is a layer showing us the location of major global cities.

We can see patterns much more easily by displaying it this way on a map.

Sofia says she's noticed that there are lots of huge cities in India and China, for example, in Asia.

Well done, Sofia.

Before we move on, let's quickly pause to check our learning so far.

I want you to choose the endings that apply to this sentence.

Careful, there could be more than one correct answer.

A geographic information system makes seeing geographical patterns easier, combines digital maps with data, or only includes information about cities.

Have a think and make your choices.

Ready? Did you find two correct answers here? I did.

They are options A and B.

A GIS makes seeing patterns much easier and helps us to combine digital maps with data.

It doesn't only include information about cities.

It includes lots and lots and lots of information.

Another of the teachers here at Oak Academy, Mr. Schofield, has recorded a video to help us discover how to use this online GIS to investigate earthquake patterns.

Over to you, Mr. Schofield.

<v Schofield>In this video,</v> we're going to use the Geography Visualiser to show where recent earthquakes have taken place around the world.

We're also going to try and show the pattern of where earthquakes take place around the world.

Let's start with a few simple things about the Geography Visualiser in case you've not used it before.

If we want to move the map around, the way we do that is we hold the left button of the mouse down and then we can drag the map to wherever we like.

We call this panning.

The other thing that's really important is we'll need to be able to zoom in and zoom out.

So I can do that using the scroll wheel of my mouse.

Or I can go to the left-hand side and there's some buttons, a zoom out button and a zoom in button, the plus and minus.

Now at the moment, we've got a satellite image of the world with the borders of the countries and the names of the countries and some cities on the map.

We call this an imagery hybrid base map.

And a base map is a background map.

I can change the base map by clicking on this button in the toolbar, but for now I'm just gonna keep it on this satellite image, because it's fine for us.

Now, in a geographic information system like this one, we can add layers of geographical information onto the map.

And the way we can do that is we can either click on this open map button and there's lots of different maps that we can use, or we can click on this add layer button.

And what we're really trying to do there is put some information on the map so that we can look at geographical patterns.

So we're going to do this, we're gonna click on the add layer button on the bottom, in the bottom toolbar.

And you can see there's lots of layers that I can put on the map.

So if I wanted to know about the rainfall in the UK, I could click on this layer, but I don't need to know that in this lesson.

So I'm going to scroll down.

I can use the handle on the right-hand side to do that, or I can use the scroll wheel of the mouse and I'm going to click on where it says recent earthquakes.

So these are going to be the earthquakes that have taken place recently.

Now depending on where you do this lesson, you'll have different earthquakes the ones that I'm going to see on my map right now.

So I'm gonna click on the add button and you'll notice when I've done that, you can see there's a little one has been added to the map layers, and that's showing me that I've added a layer onto the map.

So I'm going to close this popup now and you'll see that on the map, there's all these red circles and these are where recent earthquakes have taken place.

If I click on legend, this is a key telling me what these circles mean.

So if it's yellow or orange, they're really quite small earthquakes, where if they're red, they're becoming bigger.

And these circles are also different sizes.

So it also shows you the size of the earthquake by the size of the circle.

So if I click on an earthquake, so I can see one here, it will actually gimme some information.

So that's a 4.

7 magnitude earthquake.

And it tells me the depth of the earthquake.

It tells me whether there's a tsunami has been triggered or not.

And you can see there's no alert being issued, and obviously it shows me where it is in the world.

So I can now see the earthquakes that have recently taken place in the world and I can find out where they are.

Now, I might want to know how close an earthquake has been to a specific place.

So I'm, let's say I want to know the earthquake that's been closest to where I am.

So the way I can do this is I can actually measure a distance.

So I can see this earthquake over here looks like it's been quite close to the UK and these earthquakes have been quite close to the UK.

So I'm going to measure the distance between where I am in the UK and where these earthquakes are.

So the first thing to do is to find out where you are in the UK.

I can do that using this search button.

I can type it in or you can just zoom in and find it.

So let's say I'm based in Aberystwyth on the west coast of Wales.

And if I go to the bottom toolbar and I click measure, and then there'll be a little popup and I click measure again, and then I can choose from different options in the new popup, I'm going to click on measure line.

And now if I click with my left button of the mouse, it starts a measuring tool.

Now, currently this is in miles, I'm going to change this to kilometers.

So if I go into the toolbar and I click on metric, that's going to change into kilometers there.

This measurement will stop when I click the left button of the mouse again.

So as long as I don't do that, I can still zoom out.

And I'm going to use the scroll wheel of my mouse now, and I can see, let's find out how close it is to these earthquakes.

Okay, so that's about 1,830 kilometers.

Let's see about these ones, now that's a bit closer, isn't it? So these earthquakes on the west coast of Poland look like they're the closest ones.

I'm just gonna go in and we can see there, it's about 1,383 kilometers between Aberystwyth and the west of Poland.

If I want to see how big they are, I could click on them, and it'll tell me the size of the earthquake.

4.

5 magnitude.

It's a pretty small earthquake.

People would feel it maybe, but I wouldn't expect there to be much damage or anything like this from this earthquake.

Now let's think about whether there's a pattern for these earthquakes around the world.

So I'm going to close this popup, I'm going to zoom right out, and you can see all these earthquakes around the world.

And what I want to know is are these earthquakes just random or is there some sort of pattern to them? Now I think there's a pattern to these earthquakes and I think it's linked to what we call the plate boundaries that you may have studied.

So if I go back to the add layer button at the bottom and I click on this, and I click on the plate boundaries button and I add this layer, you'll see a number two come on the map layers and you can see something's been added to the map.

I'll close this popup.

Now these yellow lines show the boundaries between two plates.

Now as you may have studied, the crust of the earth is broken up like a jigsaw into different, and we call these pieces plates.

And these pieces are moving around, they're moving around the world very slowly, but they are moving.

The yellow lines show the boundaries between these plates.

So these plates, these big slabs of the Earth's crust, are moving in different directions.

So if I just use arrows to show this, this plate is moving this direction, whereas this plate, I'll just spin it around once I've done it, is moving in this direction.

And it's at these plate boundaries where we seem to be getting the earthquakes.

These are the boundaries between these two plates.

And if we look around the world, you can see that the majority of earthquakes are pretty close to these plate boundaries, not necessarily directly on them, but they're really close.

Now there are exceptions.

We can see these small earthquakes around here and this one in west of Poland is, is not anywhere near a plate boundary, but they tend to be pretty small.

But the majority of the earthquakes are around these plate boundaries.

And you can have a look at your map and see the recent earthquakes when you're doing this lesson to see whether that's still true.

<v ->Thank you, Mr. Schofield.

</v> That was a really interesting video about how we can use a visualizer to really clearly see patterns of how earthquakes are linked to plate boundaries.

I hope you were listening.

I wonder if you can help me with this quick question.

Alex says that this map, which is a screenshot from the visualizer, shows that earthquakes always take place on plate boundaries.

Is Alex correct? Pause the video and have a quick chat with a partner and then come back when you're ready.

What did you think? I don't think Alex is correct, did you? He isn't correct, because it's not true to say that all earthquakes always take place on plate boundaries.

Most of them take place on or very near to a plate boundary, but we do experience smaller earthquakes in other places that can be very far from plate boundaries like the one in Poland that Mr. Schofield picked up on in the video.

We're going to give you an opportunity to explore earthquakes on the visualizer now for yourself.

This is a free-to-access online GIS.

So you can click on the link that we've provided here and the visualizer will open for you.

I want you to complete these tasks in the visualizer.

I would like you to start by adding the layer for the earthquake.

So click on add layer in the bottom toolbar and then select recent earthquakes.

That will bring up those locations of the earthquakes like you saw on the video.

I would like you to measure the distance between the closest earthquake and the place where you live in the UK.

You can do that by using the measure tool in the bottom toolbar and measuring the line, the straight line distance.

Do that by left clicking where you live, changing to a metric unit, and then moving the cursor, which will draw that straight line to the place.

And that will give you the distance in kilometers.

After you've done that, then add another layer, bring up those plate boundaries so you can see that pattern for yourself.

Then get together with a partner and talk about what you can see.

Talk about the pattern of those earthquakes happening.

Where do they happen? Have a good look around the world.

Do they follow the plate boundary? Are there any major earthquakes happening away from plate boundaries? What places can you name that are at most risk of earthquakes happening very often? Pause the video now, complete the task, and when you come back, I will take you through some example answers.

Ready? Did you enjoy looking at those earthquakes on the visualizer? Your first maps when you open the visualizer should have looked like this.

We've got that world map image there and then we can use the measure tool for measuring that straight line distance.

You may have done this.

So Mr. Schofield used Aberystwyth as the location in the UK and he found that that was 1,385.

5 kilometers to the nearest earthquake in Poland.

Depending on where you live, your distance may have been a little closer or a little further.

For part two, when we bring up the plate boundaries, you will have seen something that looked like this on your screen.

And perhaps when you talk to your partner, you may have shared ideas like these.

Most of the big earthquakes did occur on plate boundaries or at least very near to them.

There were one or two smaller ones further away from plate boundaries such as the one in Poland.

So let's move on now.

We've seen where earthquakes happen and we're making a link there with the location of plate boundaries.

Let's think about how we can explore the impact of earthquakes now and how we can do that using the GIS.

Not all earthquakes will have that same impact on human life.

What do you think might cause the effect of an earthquake to be different for humans? Hmm, there's lots of things.

Perhaps you had ideas like this.

Laura says it depends how powerful the earthquake was.

And Izzy says maybe it depends whether the earthquake is happening closer to somewhere people live.

They're both really good points.

Well done, Laura and Izzy.

Let's have a quick multiple choice question before we move on.

What do you think might affect how humans are impacted by an earthquake? There may be more than one answer.

So pause the video now, choose your options, and then I will tell you the answers.

Ready? Okay, the power of the earthquake definitely has an impact.

If it's very powerful, perhaps there's going to be a bigger impact.

And the distance as well.

How close is the earthquake happening to where people live? If it's happening very close, perhaps the impact will be bigger.

It's not about lava, because lava only happens with volcanoes, not with earthquakes.

We can use the Geography Visualiser to help us investigate whether people are going to be more or less likely to be affected by the impact of earthquakes.

And Mr. Schofield is going to show us how to do just that.

<v Schofield>In this video,</v> we're going to use the Geography Visualiser to look at the likely impact of earthquakes around the world.

So you can see at the moment, we've just got the satellite image of the imagery hybrid map on this screen.

You may have the earthquake layer still on your screen, but I'm going to add this now in case you've got a screen like mine without the layer on.

So I'm going to click add layer in the bottom toolbar.

I'm going to scroll down and I'm going to find the recent earthquakes.

I'm not going to use the plate boundary layer in this one, so I'm going to click on recent earthquakes and you'll see a little one has been added to the map layer.

So I can close this popup off and now I can see the earthquakes on the screen.

Now if you've still got layers that you don't need to see on the screen anymore, you can click on map layers and you can either delete the layer.

I don't wanna delete this one, 'cause it's got the earthquakes, but if I had the plate boundary layer still on, I could click this dustbin icon and it would remove it or I can just click this toggle visibility and it takes the layer off the screen and I can put it back on easily again.

So what I would like to do is I would like to find one of the bigger earthquakes that I can see on the map, and I'm going to try and work out what the likely impact of that earthquake would be.

So the first thing I want to do, I want to find one of the bigger earthquakes.

I can see some of the bigger circles in this area around Indonesia.

So I'm going to move in a little bit and I can see there's quite a lot of earthquakes going on in this area here.

I can see there's a big one over in this point.

So I'm going to click on this, and you can see that this took place on the, it's the 16th of October.

They do the dates in an American way.

So the 10 means October 16th, the 16th of October, 2025.

It gives me the time of day.

And this was a 6.

5 magnitude earthquake.

Now that's quite big.

I would expect there, you know, some 6.

5 magnitude earthquakes have caused a huge amount of damage in the past when they've happened within kind of cities and things.

So this is a big earthquake.

So the first thing I can say is that, okay, anything over a six magnitude, we could say that could certainly cause quite a bit of damage.

So what I would like to do is think about whether this earthquake has taken place in an area where there's lots of people or lots of buildings or whether actually this earthquake has taken place a long way from towns and cities.

So I'm gonna close this popup, and all I'm going to do is because this is a satellite image, I can zoom in and just have a look at the area, and as I zoom in, I can see that, I can see there's a river here meandering around and I can see these green what look like trees and it's really dense trees.

So I'm expecting this to be, I'm just thinking about where it is in Indonesia.

This will be rainforest.

There are some houses over here, but it's really not very many.

And if I zoom out, I can see there's a relatively small settlement just on the coast there.

So what I think is actually, although this earthquake is, you know, quite big, it's not near major populations, it's not near lots of people and lots of buildings.

So I don't think this will have caused major destruction within the area.

Now because this is an earthquake that's happened, if I wanted to, I could actually use an internet search engine to find out whether I'm right, whether it did cause any destruction.

So you might want to do that on the earthquakes that you can see on your screen.

Find out if you think it would've caused lots of destruction and then check if you are right.

However, we can also use the visualizer to think about where earthquakes might be likely to cause lots of damage in the future.

So at the moment, we've got earthquakes, which have already happened, have happened very recently.

But if I go onto the add layers button in the bottom toolbar and I click on this, I'm going to add two layers that I think might help us think about whether earthquakes are likely to cause damage in the future.

One of these layers is cities of the world, and this is going to put on some circles, some proportional circles to show major cities of the world.

I'm then going to scroll down and I'm going to put the plate boundaries layer back onto the map.

And you'll now notice I've got three layers on the map layers button in the bottom toolbar.

I'm going to close this button.

So if I zoom out now, I'm gonna zoom out so we can see most of the world, and actually for this, I don't need the recent earthquakes on the map.

So if I click on map layers and you can see there's a little tick button which says toggle visibility.

If I click that, the recent earthquakes will disappear from the screen and all I'll be left with is the plate boundaries and the cities of the world.

Now as we know, earthquakes are likely to happen on these plate boundary lines in the future, 'cause that's where our major earthquakes are.

So what I can do is I can look at whether there are major cities on these plate boundaries and wherever there's a big orange circle, if I just show you the key, these show you the size of the city.

So a circle this big would have over 37 million people in it, huge city, but even what looks like a relatively small circle would have 9 million people in it over here.

You can see the size of the circle for London, just to give you an idea of just how big some of these cities are.

So what I'm looking for is cities which are major cities close to the plate boundaries.

So here, for example, I can see Istanbul, and it's very close to a plate boundary, isn't it? I can see here, for example, there is Tokyo, which is really close to a number of plate boundaries.

And that means I can use GIS to look at areas, look at places where I would think there's quite a big risk of a lot of people being affected by earthquakes.

I would say places like Tokyo and Istanbul are certainly places which would be at risk and would want to prepare very carefully for earthquakes taking place there.

And again, it's something you might want to use a search engine for to actually see if there's been earthquakes in these places in the past.

So as you can see, geographic information systems like the Geography Visualiser, they're really useful to be able to see the lightly impact of earthquakes in places around the world.

<v ->Thanks, Mr. Schofield.

</v> That was another really good video.

Wasn't it interesting to be able to see how we can add and remove those layers to reveal those different patterns? Before we move along, let's try a true or false question to check on our learning.

Is it true or false to say that it is impossible to predict where is at risk of earthquakes? What do you think? Did you choose false? Yes, it's false to say this.

It's not impossible to predict where is at risk from earthquakes, but why is that false? What reasons could we give? Ready? Did you have ideas like this? Major earthquakes take place on or very near to plate boundaries.

Therefore, where there are major cities on or near plate boundaries, they're going to be more at risk from earthquakes than other places which are further away from those plate boundaries.

Good job.

Let's try another question.

Take a look at this screenshot from the Geography Visualiser.

How many layers have we added to this map? Hmm.

Pause the video to take a closer look and then reveal the answer.

Ready? Did you recognize that there were three layers on this map? We have layers for earthquakes, for plate boundaries, and we can also see the layer for major cities has been added there.

Well done, Izzy.

It's time now for Task B and this is another opportunity for you to have a go at using the Geography Visualiser yourself.

The link is there again, but you may already have this open from Task A earlier in the lesson.

I want you to follow the instructions and fill in the table to show whether or not you think an earthquake will have had a big impact on people.

On the visualizer with the recent earthquakes layer visible, find a large recent earthquake that has taken place on land.

Click on that earthquake and click into the circle and that will reveal the size, what we call the magnitude of the earthquake.

You can then zoom in and see a satellite image of the surrounding area.

In doing this, you'll be able to make notes in the table about the location, what's the name of the location where the earthquake is happening, what country have you zoomed in on, what continent is it in? What's the magnitude of the earthquake? You can then write a description of the surrounding area that you can see.

Is it a forest, for example, or is it a city? And then you'll be able to make some notes about what you think the impact will be on people.

When you've done this, move on to part two of Task B and follow these instructions to complete the second table.

I want you to use the add layer button in the toolbar to add the city's layer onto the map.

You can also use it to add the plate boundaries layer as well.

I would like you then to choose any three cities anywhere in the world that you believe are at high risk from earthquakes.

Use the measure tool to find out the distance that each of these cities is from a plate boundary.

Complete the table then with the information about the three cities you have chosen.

Remember you can come back and read the instructions on the previous slide or on this slide at any time.

So don't worry if you're not quite sure what the buttons on the visualizer do, you can always check back on the instructions.

Complete the task, and then when you're ready, come back and I will go through some examples with you.

Enjoy.

All done? Great job.

Let's have a look at some examples together.

These are some tables that I've completed and your tables may have looked like this as well.

So I chose New Zealand for my first location where there has been a recent earthquake.

The magnitude of the earthquake that I clicked on was 4.

7, and in that particular location, I noticed that there was a forest.

It was a forest in a steep-sided valley and that was far away really from towns and cities.

And to me, that meant that the impact on people would be low because there weren't many people living there.

It was a forest.

For part two, the three cities that I selected were Tokyo in Japan, Jakarta in Indonesia, and Mexico City in Mexico.

I found out the populations of those three cities and I wrote those numbers into the table there.

The biggest population of those three cities was Japan with just over 37 million people.

Then I use the measure tool to work out the distance of each location from a plate boundary.

And interestingly, Tokyo in Japan.

Japan was the country with the highest population.

It's also the country that's closest to a plate boundary at less than 100 kilometers.

Did you choose these locations or other locations? You could pause the video and compare your work with a partner and see what they discovered.

That's the end of our lesson today.

I hope you've enjoyed discovering how we can use a GIS to learn more about patterns of earthquakes around the world.

To summarize what we now know, we know that we can use GIS to identify earthquake patterns and we know from using the GIS that major earthquakes occur on or very close to plate boundaries.

We can use a GIS to predict the impact of earthquakes on humans by looking at the environments where they happen.

The impact of earthquakes can be affected by several things, including the power of the earthquake itself and whether or not many people live nearby to the location where the earthquake happens.

I hope you had as much fun as I have today.

That's all for today.

Bye for now.