The Centre of the Universe, located on Vancouver Island, sits atop the Cascadia Subduction Zone, where sea-floor of the Juan de Fuca plate is being pushed eastward beneath the North America continent. This process of subduction generates different types of earthquakes, including great (magnitude 8+) “megathrust earthquakes” along the plate boundary, with associated tsunami; shallow “crustal earthquakes” within the over riding North American plate; and deep “slab earthquakes” within the down-going Juan de Fuca plate. All have the potential to generate hazardous ground shaking.

SchoolShake is installing a network of Raspberry Shake seismometers in southern Vancouver Island schools to provide a real-time feed of ground shaking and earthquake locations. This program will give students and teachers a hands-on opportunity to learn about earthquakes and participate in a large-scale community science experiment that will gain new insights into the faults beneath our beautiful island.

The Centre of the Universe is pleased to be part of the SchoolShake network. Our Raspberry Shake is located in the basement of what used to be the Director’s home (now referred to as the ‘white house’).

You can customize the view with the DataView application (below) - for a tour of the application click on the “?” button in the top right hand corner. The default view shows tracings of the latest seismic activity. Clicking on any of the traces will enlarge the trace (see below) and allow further exploration.