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Contents of 11.8 How are earthquakes measured?
11.8 How are earthquakes measured?
- Intensity - a measure of the violence of an earthquake. The human-realized effects such as damage to structures and secondary effects like landslides.
- Mercalli scale - made by Giuseppe Mercalli (c. 1902) and runs from a low of I to a high value of XII
- Current revision is the Modified Mercalli scale
- Intensities are commonly plotted on maps with intensity contours
- Can be used to determine intensities of historic earthquakes through newspapers, diaries, etc.