Chile's Plate Boundaries



Chile is located essentially at the convergence of the South American, Nazca, and Antarctic plates. The South American and Nazca plates converge at about 88 mm per year (one of the fastest rates in the world) making Chile an area highly vulnerable to earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanism, and landslides. Chile's earthquakes in particular tend to be very powerful, so powerful in fact that it boasts the location of the largest earthquake of the last 200 years - the 9.5 earthquake of 1960. The strength of these humongous earthquakes often causes large earthquakes and tsunamis to occur elsewhere. For example, the 1960 earthquake caused a tsunami that caused loss of life not only in Chile, but Japan, Hawaii, and the Philippines as well. Chile has encountered 13 major earthquakes in the last 30 years.

Citations:

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“The Chilean Earthquake: The Plate Tectonics.” Physics Today, American Institute of Physics, 1 Mar. 2010, physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.024122/full/.

 Cecioni, Adriano. Pineda, Veronica. "Geology and Geomorphology of Natural Hazards and Human-Induced Disasters in Chile." Developments in Earth Surface Processes Volume 13. (2009): Pages 379-413. Science Direct.

Comments

  1. Ana GGSeptember 8, 2018 at 3:11 PM

    Yes, they do have really big quakes often...do you know how they prepare for them....

    ReplyDelete

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