A week or so ago, two earthquakes hit Los Angeles. They were recorded at magnitudes of 6.4 and 7.1. NASA has created a map to show how intense the earthquakes were and how it affected the surrounding regions. Created by NASA's Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis team, it features rainbow-colored stripes emanating from the epicenter of the quake.
Each rainbow stripes means that the ground has been displaced there by some 4.8 inches. It's the same logic as a topographic map, where lines that are closer together indicate steeper slopes. In this case, the closer together the rainbow stripes are, the more the ground was displaced by the temblor.
Eric Fielding, a geophysicist at JPL, says the parts of the map along the fault where the colors appear jumbled suggest even more dramatic movement of the ground.
(Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ARIA)