Beachball diagrams help explain earthquakes characteristics

Yellowstone is a weekly column written by scientists and collaborators of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory. This week's contribution is from . When an earthquake occurs, usually the first characteristics reported are the event’s location and magnitude. But with a little more analysis, we can often use the earthquake to obtain information about the orientation of the source fault and the direction of slip on that fault. The fault orientation and the slip direction of an earthquake are described by something called a focal mechanism. And focal mechanisms are usually visualized...