Was curious as to how active the Sichuan region of China was, so fired up WorldWind and the earthquake plug-ins.

The 7-day plug-in shows the Monday earthquake (lower left) and all the quakes and aftershocks since then.  Fairly easy to tell where the fault line lays.

China_EQ01

Then I moved on to the Historical Earthquake query for the same region over the last 30 years.

China_EQ03

As you can see, the whole area is very active, with the majority of earthquakes focused in two main areas.  The results of the query show that while this is the largest earthquake recently, 1976 had several earthquakes in the 6+ range.

China_EQ02

August 1976 and May 2008

Comparing the 1976 earthquake and aftershocks to the May 2008 earthquakes, you can see that a lot of fault stress has been released this time around.

China_EQ1976

1976 Earthquakes

China_EQ2008

2008 Earthquakes