This list of earthquakes in Ecuador is a list of notable earthquakes that have affected

Ecuador Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ''Eku ...

recorded history Recorded history or written history describes the historical events that have been recorded in a written form or other documented communication which are subsequently evaluated by historians using the historical method. For broader world hist ...

Tectonic setting

The active

tectonics Tectonics (; ) are the processes that control the structure and properties of the Earth's crust and its evolution through time. These include the processes of mountain building, the growth and behavior of the strong, old cores of continents k ...

of Ecuador is dominated by the effects of the

subduction Subduction is a geological process in which the oceanic lithosphere is recycled into the Earth's mantle at convergent boundaries. Where the oceanic lithosphere of a tectonic plate converges with the less dense lithosphere of a second plate, the ...

of the

Nazca Plate The Nazca Plate or Nasca Plate, named after the Nazca region of southern Peru, is an oceanic tectonic plate in the eastern Pacific Ocean basin off the west coast of South America. The ongoing subduction, along the Peru–Chile Trench, of the Na ...

beneath the

South American Plate The South American Plate is a major tectonic plate which includes the continent of South America as well as a sizable region of the Atlantic Ocean seabed extending eastward to the African Plate, with which it forms the southern part of the Mid-A ...

. Ecuador lies within the Northern Volcanic Zone where the subduction zone is moving at a rate of 7 cm/yr to the east-northeast, significantly oblique to the trend of this segment of the Andes. The subduction zone has an overall dip of 25–30°, but varies rapidly along strike due to the effects of subduction of the

Carnegie Ridge The Carnegie Ridge is an aseismic ridge on the Nazca Plate that is being subducted beneath the South American Plate. The ridge is thought to be a result of the passage of the Nazca Plate over the Galapagos hotspot. It is named for the research ...

. The Carnegie Ridge is an oceanic plateau that formed as the Nazca Plate passed over the Galapagos hotspot. The plate interface above the subducted part of the ridge has a shallower dip than the area to both north and south, the boundaries interpreted to consist of two large tears in the downgoing Nazca Plate. The northern part of Ecuador overlies the subducted part of the Carnegie Ridge and is an area where the Nazca Plate is interpreted to be strongly coupled to the South American Plate, causing an unusually large degree of

intraplate deformation Intraplate deformation is the folding, breaking, or flow of the Earth's crust within plates instead of at their margins. This process usually occurs in areas with especially weak crust and upper mantle, such as the Tibetan Plateau (Figure 1). Intr ...

. The main

active fault An active fault is a fault that is likely to become the source of another earthquake sometime in the future. Geologists commonly consider faults to be active if there has been movement observed or evidence of seismic activity during the last 10,0 ...

zones of Ecuador are SSW-NNE trending dextral strike-slip faults running parallel to the main subdivisions of the Andes, two major SW-NE dextral strike-slip zones, the Pallatanga and Chingual faults, and north-south trending reverse faults such as the Quito fault.

Seismicity

Earthquakes that affect Ecuador can be divided into those that result from movement on the subduction interface along the plate boundary, those that result from deformation within the South American and Nazca Plates and those that are associated with active volcanoes.

Interplate earthquakes

Megathrust events along the subduction interface generate the largest earthquakes, often triggering destructive

tsunami A tsunami ( ; from ja, 津波, lit=harbour wave, ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explo ...

s, such as the

1906 Ecuador–Colombia earthquake The 1906 Ecuador–Colombia earthquake occurred at 10:36:10 (UTC+5) on Wednesday January 31, 1906 off the coast of Ecuador, near Esmeraldas. The earthquake had a moment magnitude of 8.8 and triggered a destructive tsunami that caused at least 50 ...

Intraplate earthquakes

The most damaging earthquakes to affect Ecuador are those associated with faulting within the South American Plate, such as the

1949 Ambato earthquake The 1949 Ambato earthquake was the deadliest earthquake in the Western Hemisphere in five years. On August 5, 1949, it struck Ecuador's Tungurahua Province southeast of its capital Ambato and killed 5,050 people. Measuring 6.4 on the sca ...

. Earthquakes within the downgoing Nazca Plate, such as the M_w 7.1 event of August 2010, are generally too deep to cause significant damage in Ecuador although they are felt over a wide area.

Volcanic earthquakes

Swarms of relatively small earthquakes are commonly associated with volcanic activity, such as the Quito swarm in 1998-1999 related to the

Guagua Pichincha Pichincha is a stratovolcano in Ecuador. The capital Quito wraps around its eastern slopes. The two highest peaks of the mountain are Wawa Pichincha (Kichwa ''wawa'' child, baby / small, Spanish spelling ''Guagua Pichincha'') () and Ruku Pichinch ...

volcano.

List of notable earthquakes

Magnitudes - M_w

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 ...

, M_L

Richter magnitude scale The Richter scale —also called the Richter magnitude scale, Richter's magnitude scale, and the Gutenberg–Richter scale—is a measure of the strength of earthquakes, developed by Charles Francis Richter and presented in his landmark 1935 ...

, M_s

Surface wave magnitude The surface wave magnitude (M_s) scale is one of the magnitude scales used in seismology to describe the size of an earthquake. It is based on measurements of Rayleigh surface waves that travel along the uppermost layers of the Earth. This ma ...

References

Earthquakes An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...

{{Earthquakes in Ecuador