Both earthquakes and tectonic plate movement can affect organisms.
Earthquakes happen quickly and are short-term environmental changes.
Tectonic plate movement occurs slowly and is a long-term environmental change.
Step-by-step explanation:
Earthquakes leads to numerous and dangerous environmental changes and makes a huge impact on the landscape. Earthquakes can lead to ground shaking, ground rupture, fires, tsunamis, surface faulting, landslides, mud slips, liquefaction, etc.
These disastrous short-term events can further lead to other long-term environmental damages like fire can destroy landscapes including cities, forests, plains, and mountains; tsunamis can destroy the coastal ecology, landslides and mudslides destroy the mountain structures.
Since the earthquakes occur quickly for a short time with massive intensity, the short-term damages are very high.
Tectonic plate changes happens gradually over years and leads to long term environmental impact like climate and temperature changes which effect terrestrial and aquatic environments.