M6.0 earthquake strikes off Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara

JAKARTA, (Reuters): An earthquake of magnitude 6.0 struck off Indonesia’s East Nusa Tenggara island on Tuesday, the geophysics agency said, adding there was no potential for tsunami.

The agency said the epicentre of the quake was out at sea at a depth of 75 kilometres in the eastern Indonesian region, near Timor Leste.

The quake was felt weakly on land in some areas on East Nusa Tenggara but there were no immediate reports of damage, the agency said.

Indonesia straddles the so-called “Pacific Ring of Fire”, a highly seismically active zone, where different plates on the Earth’s crust meet and create a large number of earthquakes and volcano activity.

About 76 per cent of the Earth’s seismic energy is released as earthquakes in the Ring of Fire. Meanwhile 90 percent of all earthquakes and around 81 percent of the world’s largest earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire.

It contains approximately 750–915 volcanoes (about two-thirds of the world’s total) that have been active during the Holocene.

The Ring is a direct result of plate tectonics: specifically the movement, collision and destruction of lithospheric plates (e.g. the Pacific Plate) under and around the Pacific Ocean. The collisions have created a nearly continuous series of subduction zones, where volcanoes are created and an earthquake occur.

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