Adrian's Blog

   The Nazca Plate has three triple Junctions The Nazca Plate is a small oceanic plate of the coast of South America. It has five triple junctions where three different plates come together. It also produced the largest earthquake ever recorded by seismographs in 1960.   The Formation of the Andes Mountains The Andes Mountains have formed on the continental side of the subduction zone that lies between Nazca crustal plate and the South American Plate. The Peru-Chile Trench separates the two plates. The Eastward Motion of the Nazca Crustal Plate The absolute eastward motion of the Nazca crustal plate is one of the fastest of any tectonic plate on Earth. The absolute motion is 3.7 cm/yr eastward.  The two largest  Earthquakes In Recent Past Massive earthquakes that have occurred due to subduction of the Nazca Plate beneath the South American Plate. The May 22, 1960 earthquake near Valdivia was 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale. The February 27, 2010 earthquak...

  Columbia  Colombia is nicknamed the "gateway to South America" because it sits in the northwestern part of the continent where South America connects with Central and North America. It is the fifth largest country in Latin America and home to the world's second largest population of Spanish-speaking people. Colombia is a land of extremes. Through its center run the towering, snow-covered volcanoes and mountains of the Andes. Tropical beaches line the north and west. There are deserts in the north and vast grasslands, called Los Llanos, in the east. Dense forests fill Colombia's Amazon Basin, which takes up nearly the country's entire southern half. In northwest Colombia, a warm, wet, jungle-filled area called the Chocó reaches across the Panama border. Hazards, disasters and catastrophes are all related to events that pose risks or threats, but they differ in terms of severity and impact. Hazards refer to potential sources of danger or harm, such as natural phen...