alt Hacker NewsIs there a disproportionate frequency of earthquakes in Japan? My mental model is that there would be a uniformish distribution of earthquakes all around the Pacific ring-of-fire. But even living in a U.S. state with a Pacific Ocean border (and tsunami warning signs all along the coastal towns), it still seems like Japanese earthquakes outnumber local ones by a wide margin (especially for bigger ones like M7.0+). This could also be explained because Japan has a much higher population density, so earthquakes make headlines easier. And the devastating earthquakes in 2011 could make people more sensitive to earthquakes in Japan. But I guess my question is partially answered by a map of earthquakes on the Wikipedia page about the ring of fire:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire#/media/File:EQs_1...
...where is does seem like the West Coast of the North America has lower quake frequency. Here's to hoping the Cascadia subduction zone remains quiet for a while longer.
No reason that the rate of subduction has to be the same everywhere. Some of the plate boundaries might be moving into each other in different directions too, the coupling between plates is not necessarily the same everywhere.
Anyway, in the case of Cascadia, remember that the lack of big earthquakes over the past 100 years is probably telling you that we just happen to live in a time where strain is accumulating (D:)