I was viewing the usgs animation site watching the china quakes. is the pacific rim always this active?

Question

I was viewing the usgs animation site watching the china quakes. is the pacific rim always this active?

Answer 1

The Pacific Rim is also what is known as the Ring of Fire since it has many of the more earthquake-prone areas of the planet and more active and dormant volcanoes possibly because ocean plates tend to be thinner than continental plates.

Answer 2

The animation may show more activity than usual for the month because of the China quake.

The Pacific Rim is always active because it is circled by convergent or transform plate boundaries. However, according to a science news report on Livescience.com dated May 25, new research shows that large earthquakes may actually set off earthquakes far from their epicenters. A group of scientists (Velasco, Hernandez, ,Parsons, and Pankow)  studied the number of quakes 5 hours before and 5 hours after 15 earthquakes of magnitude 7 or larger. They concluded that 12 of the earthquakes created surface waves that set off other earthquakes around the world. According to the report, the huge Indian Ocean quake of 2004 generated small quakes " as far away as Alaska, California and Ecuador."

Study  funded by National Science Foundation and US Geological Survey.