Epicentral distance

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Earthquakes
Types Mainshock Foreshock Aftershock Blind thrust Doublet Interplate Intraplate Megathrust Remotely triggered Slow Submarine Supershear Tsunami Earthquake swarm
Causes Fault movement Volcanism Induced seismicity
Characteristics Epicenter Epicentral distance Hypocenter Shadow zone Seismic waves P wave S wave
Measurement Seismometer Seismic magnitude scales Seismic intensity scales
Prediction Coordinating Committee for Earthquake Prediction Forecasting
Other topics Shear wave splitting Adams–Williamson equation Flinn–Engdahl regions Earthquake engineering Seismite Seismology
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Epicentral distance refers to the ground distance from the epicenter to a specified point.^[1] Generally, the smaller the epicentral distance of an earthquake of the same scale, the heavier the damage caused by the earthquake. On the contrary, with the increase of epicentral distance, the damage caused by the earthquake is gradually reduced.^[2] Due to the limitation of seismometers designed in the early years, some seismic magnitude scales began to show errors when the epicentral distance exceeded a certain range from the observation points.^{[Notes 1]} In seismology, the unit of far earthquakes is usually ° (degree), while the unit of near earthquakes is km.^{[Notes 2]} But regardless of distance, Δ is used as a symbol for the epicentral distance.

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