Taipei and the coastal regions of northern Taiwan are less likely to be hit by a strong earthquake than other parts of the country, a local seismologist said.
“The Earth’s crust under Taipei and the coastal areas of north Taiwan, where three of the country’s four nuclear power plants are located, is only 30km thick, far less than beneath the Central Mountain Range,” said Wang Chien-ying (王乾盈), a professor at National Central University’s Graduate Institute of Geophysics.
The thickness of the continental crust beneath the Central Mountain Range, which makes up two-thirds of the land surface in central and southern Taiwan, is 45km, exceeding the world’s average crustal thickness of 35km, Wang said.
“The figure indicates that the Earth’s crust beneath the Central Mountain Range is still being squeezed by the Eurasian and Philippine plates and is consequently less stable,” Wang said.
“This means that the areas near the mountain range are more prone to be hit by earthquakes,” he added.
In comparison, the crustal thickness under Taipei and northern coastal areas is about 30km, which indicates that mountain formation in these areas has entered a stable period and they are thus less likely to be struck by major earthquakes, he said.
The possibility of the Tatun (大屯) volcano group on the outskirts of Taipei causing big earthquakes is very low because Tatun volcanoes are just small hills in the Earth’s subduction zone, which means they are unlikely to become active or grow into mountains, Wang said.
The Earth’s crust beneath the plain and basin areas in Taiwan is less than 30km thick, which suggests that only mild or moderate earthquakes may occur in those areas, he said.
Wang’s research team reached the conclusions after eight years of study in a joint project with the US that was financed by the National Science Council.
Wang said the height of a mountain depends on the thickness of the Earth’s crust beneath it.
The thickness of the crust beneath the Himalaya Mountains, for instance, is 80km, which allows some of its peaks to stand 8,000m above sea level, Wang said.
With the absence of advanced measuring tools, Wang said, Taiwan has previously had difficulty correctly measuring the thickness of the crust beneath its major mountains.
“Through cooperation with the US, we managed to determine the crustal thickness under our major mountains,” Wang said.
The data will allow seismologists to more accurately forecast the areas that may experience strong tremors during a major earthquake, he said.
Such data is useful when selecting a site for facilities such as nuclear power plants or reservoirs, he added.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching