The 1905 Bolnai earthquake occurred in or near the
Asgat Sum of
Zavkhan Province
Zavkhan (; mn, Завхан, Zawhan, ) is one of the 21 aimags (provinces) of Mongolia, located in the west of the country, 1,104 km from Ulaanbaatar. Its capital is Uliastai. The aimag is named after the Zavkhan River, which forms the border b ...
in
Mongolia
Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...
on 23 July. The earthquake has been estimated at 8.25
[ to 8.4][ on the ]moment magnitude scale
The moment magnitude scale (MMS; denoted explicitly with or Mw, and generally implied with use of a single M for magnitude) is a measure of an earthquake's magnitude ("size" or strength) based on its seismic moment. It was defined in a 1979 pape ...
.
Background
The Bolnai earthquake is believed to be a strike-slip
In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...
rupture of a branch of the Bolnai Fault, extending about 300[ to 375][ km along the fault, and possibly an additional 80 km of the Teregtiin Fault. The fault displacement during the earthquake was greater than 6 m,][ and possibly as much as 11 m,][ and the duration is estimated at about two minutes.][
The Bolnai earthquake was preceded by the Tsetserleg earthquake two weeks earlier and is considered a part of the same general crustal movement.][
]
Damage
There are few records of the immediate effects of the earthquake due to the remoteness of Mongolia
Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...
in 1905. However, rockslides were reported in the nearby mountains, and supposedly "two lakes, each of eight acres in size, disappeared".[
]
Popular culture
Lasting damage of the earthquake can be seen in the Mongolia special of the Amazon Prime motoring show The Grand Tour
''The Grand Tour'' is a British motoring television series, created by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May and Andy Wilman, made for Amazon exclusively for its online streaming service Amazon Prime Video, and premiered on 18 Novembe ...
.[
]
See also
* List of earthquakes in 1905
This is a list of earthquakes in 1905. Only magnitude 6.0 or greater earthquakes appear on the list. Exceptions to this are earthquakes which have caused death, injury or damage. Events which occurred in remote areas will be excluded from the l ...
References
External links
*
{{Earthquakes in 1905
1905 earthquakes
Earthquakes in Mongolia
Earthquakes in China
July 1905 events
20th century in Mongolia
1905 in China
1905 disasters in China
1905 disasters in Mongolia
1905 disasters in Asia
Strike-slip earthquakes