Richter magnitude scale long as its sensors are not located in the earthquake's shadow. The following describes the typical effects of earthquakes of various magnitudes near the epicenter. The values are typical only. They should be taken with extreme caution, since intensity and thus ground effects depend not only on the magnitude, but also on the distance to the epicenter, the depth of the earthquake's focus beneath the epicenter, the location of the epicenter and geological conditions (certain terrains can amplify seismic signals). The intensity and death toll depend on several factors (earthquake depth, epicenter location, population density, to name a few) and
Moment magnitude scale band. To simplify this calculation, he noted that the lowest frequency parts of the spectrum can often be used to estimate the rest of the spectrum. The lowest frequency asymptote of a seismic spectrum is characterized by the seismic moment, . Using an approximate relation between radiated energy and seismic moment (which assumes stress drop is complete and ignores fracture energy), (where E is in Joules and is in Nformula_4m), Kanamori approximated by The formula above made it much easier to estimate the energy-based magnitude , but it changed the fundamental nature of the scale into a moment magnitude scale.