Triple junction
While most places have trenches where two large tectonic plates meet, Chile is one of the few places where three major plates meet. In other words, it is a triple junction.
The Nazca Plate, borders the South American Plate for most part of the continent. But towards the tip of the continent and bordering Chile is the Antarctic Plate.
The Nazca Plate is subducting beneath the South American Plate at a rate of 80 mm a year; the Antarctic Plate is subducting beneath the South American Plate at a rate of 20 mm per year.
What makes Chile suffer from very powerful quakes is the fact that the angle of subduction (diving) by the Nazca Plate below the South American Plate is very shallow — 5 to 15 degrees.
The place where one plate subducts beneath another is called a trench. The place where new ocean crust is formed is called a ridge. It can be seen as the recycling of the ocean crust — new ocean crust is formed at the mid-oceanic ridges and is consumed (destroyed) at the subduction zones (trenches).
Chile: where three tectonic plate boundaries meet | Science Chronicle (journosdiary.com)
https://spotlight.unavco.org/station-pages/conz/eo/scienceImage1.png
It seems like this country's tectonic setting (aka, having plate boundaries closeby) will make it very likely to have earthquakes and volcanic activity!. It'll be interesting to see what you find out in the next w weeks about those!
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of how a country that is so long and thin it can also be a potential place to receive earthquakes, due to the trench and ridge. I also like the idea of how there are additional plates besides the main seven continental plates that are touching your country, especially that Nazca Plate. Well done!
ReplyDeleteHello Serena! It is no wonder that your chosen country Chile, experiences large magnitude earthquakes because of the three plate junctions you mentioned. My country, Indonesia is also found in a seismically active region in Southeast Asia. Indonesia is an earthquake-prone country because it is located in the junction of four tectonic plates, namely the Indo-Australian, Eurasian, Philippine, and Pacific. The catastrophes Indonesia suffers are mainly due to tsunamis as a result of these big quakes. I wonder if Chile also experience these destructive giant waves as a result of these very strong earthquakes.
ReplyDeleteHi Serena,
ReplyDeleteYour country and mine are strikingly similar, which makes sense considering their proximity to each other. My country is also located a triple junction, it boarders a corner of the South America plate and the Nazca plate like yours, but it also boarders the Caribbean and Panama plates. As time goes on, more similarities between our two countries are sure to come up and I'm intrigued to see what they might be, and also what might be different.