Postcard: Stephen Hicks on the Pacific Ocean

Stephen Hicks, a PhD student in the School of Environmental Sciences , is part of a scientific team currently on a three-week research cruise in the Pacific Ocean to understand earthquake hazard along the western coast of the United States. "The northwest coast of America lies along the Pacific Ring of Fire - the plate tectonic boundary that is responsible for the world's largest and most damaging earthquakes. In the past decade, the earthquake hazard around the Pacific Rim has made dramatically clear, particularly from the 2004 Indonesia and 2011 Japan earthquakes and their resulting tsunamis. Huge battlelines Along the northwest coast of America, the same giant forces as those in Japan and Indoneisa are at work. Here, the Pacific seafloor is sinking beneath the North American continent, drawing huge battlelines between two tectonic plates. We call sinking of tectonics plates subduction . The last strong earthquake to hit this region was magnitude nine.