How It's Used

"New Zealanders living in the city of Christchurch (population 377,000) on the South Island's  Canterbury Plains were hit hard Tuesday by 6.3-magnitude earthquake, an aftershock from September's 7.1-magnitude quake. Prior to these two seismic events, Canterbury Plains likely had not experienced an earthquake in thousands of years. In fact, scientists did not even know there was a geological fault there until it ruptured last year."

—Larry Greenemeier, "Why Was New Zealand's Latest Earthquake So Deadly? Christchurch copes with a tragedy it did not see coming," Scientific American, February 22, 2011.

Links

Related on eAlmanac
The Four Cardinal Directions

Beyond eAlmanac
Wikipedia article on "South Island"