The deadliest earthquake to hit this year so far was the 6.9 magnitude quake which struck Lombok, Indonesia, on August 5 killing more than 500 people.
A series of powerful aftershocks saw the total death toll later rise to 513.
People have been living with earthquakes and their devastating effects for thousands of years.
But our understanding of what they are and how they are caused has improved as we better understand the science behind the natural phenomenon.
What is an earthquake?
An earthquake describes the Earth shaking violently caused by movements in its outer layer known as the lithosphere.
The lithosphere is combination of the Earth’s outer layer, the solid crust, and the top section of the hot mantle area below.
This layer does not move as one but like a jigsaw with the puzzle pieces constantly sliding past one another.
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The pieces are given the scientific name tectonic plates, and their edges are called plate boundaries.
As a result of the constant shifting around, the plate boundaries develop cracks called faults.
When these faults collide, they create earthquakes through the release of pent-up energy released as seismic waves which reverberate through the Earth outward.
Once they reach the surface, they cause everything in their path to shake causing what we call an earthquake.
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How do we measure earthquakes?
Scientists use a device called a seismograph to detect earthquakes through the recording of electromagnetic sensors being turned into electrical charges.
The instrument records the seismic waves as a series of zig-zags on a blank sheet of paper.
An earthquake’s size is measured by its magnitude and this helps seismologists to predict how devastating earthquake damage can be.
The numbers used fall on a scale defined by the Richter magnitude scale, developed by Charles Richter in 1935.
The scale runs from less than 2.0 to 10.0, although there have been no recorded earthquakes of this size in our history.