Selene's Blog

 Romanias Seismic Activity       R omania just experienced an earthquake on the 14th of February. The magnitude was 5.6 and it also affected the countries Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, Romania, Slovakia, and Serbia. Romania contains the Vrancea earthquake zone, which is the site of strong intermediate-depth seismicity, down to 220 km depth. Different from the scattered crustal seis- micity, most of the intermediate-depth earthquakes occur in a very limited seismogenic volume with about 30 × 70 km lateral extent and in a depth range from 70–180 km  Romania lies on the Vrancea fault that forms an ellipse stretching from the northeast to the southwest of the country. Proximity to the fault and poor soils make Bucharest Europe's highest seismic risk capital city and one of the 10 most vulnerable cities in the world. Over 35% of Romanians, or 65% of the urban population, is exposed to seismic hazards from the Vrance...

  Romania's Tectonic Plates  During Early Cretaceous time, movement sense changed and the microplates were translated toward the stable craton. The Apuseni ophiolites were obducted onto continental crust. Convergent plate boundaries, with flysch, nappe structures, and silicic volcanism, developed between Moesia-Pannonia and the Tethys-Dinaric Oceans and between Pannonia and the Siret Ocean. In Paleocene time, a belt of calc-alkalic rocks (banatites) developed in western Romania and the Balkan Mountains as a result of plate convergence of Rhodope and Moesia as the last of Tethys was subducted. This was followed by a continental collision of Moesia and Pannonia and the uplift of the South Carpathians. Neogene volcanism and molasse developed as end stages of plate subduction and collision. Modern earthquake activity of the Vrancea Mountains and high heat flow in Transylvania suggest that subduction is still going on around the great Carpathian arch. The revision of Romanian earth...