Nepal on the Plate Tectonic Map
Nepal is a very small landlocked country sandwiched between two of Asias biggest countries, India and China. The tallest mountain in the world, Mt.Everest is located in the Himalayas of Nepal. In the picture below that I acquired from "Nepal: The amazon of Asia" ,you can see that the map of Nepal is kind of in a rectangular shape.
Map Of Nepal |
Nepal lies right in the intersection of the Indian and Eurasian plate as you can see in the picture below retrieved from ARCGIS education maps. There are many fault lines going throughout the country horizontally. Nepal is prone to very high magnitude earthquakes from time to time. The most recent earthquake in Nepal was 7.8 magnitude on April 2015 that killed nearly 9,000 people and injured more than 22,000 people all over the country.
Nepal in the Intersection of Indian Plate and Eurasian Plate marked in Red. |
Fun Fact: According to "How Mt.Everest was Formed", the ultimate reason for the forming of Mt. Everest was the Indian Plate moving northwards towards the Eurasian plate. What's really surprising is that the Mt.Everest is still growing taller every year as the Indian tectonic plate is still moving towards the Eurasian plate at the speed of 67 mm per year.
Movement of Indian Plate Towards Eurasian Plate |
Very good images and explanation. I expect a lot of quakes next week when you post here again. It seems your country is literally in the middle of the geological 'action'...
ReplyDeleteThank you Ana. Yes I'm ready to do the research on earthquakes next week.
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