The Caribbean Sea is a sea of the North Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere, located south of the Gulf of Mexico and southwest of the Sargasso Sea. It is bounded by the Greater Antilles to the north from Cuba to Puerto Rico, the Lesser Antilles to the east from the Virgin Islands to Trinidad and Tobago, South America to the south from the Venezuelan coastline to the Colombian coastline, and Central America and the Yucatán Peninsula to the west from Panama to Mexico. The geopolitical region centered around the Caribbean Sea, including the numerous islands of the West Indies and adjacent coastal areas in the mainland of the Americas, is known as the Caribbean.
Puerto Rico, officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is an archipelagic island U.S. territory comprised of the eponymous main island of Puerto Rico and 142 smaller islands, including Vieques, Culebra, and Mona. It is located between the Greater and Lesser Antilles in the northeastern Caribbean Sea, east of Hispaniola, west of Saint Thomas, north of Venezuela, and south of the Puerto Rico Trench. Measuring 177 km in length and 65 km in width with a land area of 8,868 sq km, the main island is the 3rd largest in the U.S., 4th in the Caribbean, 29th in the Americas, and 81st in the world, making it the 174th largest country or dependency by surface area. With 3.2 million residents, it is the 2nd largest in the U.S., 4th in the Caribbean, 4th in the Americas, and 31st in the world, making it the 136th largest country or dependency by population.
The North American plate is a tectonic plate containing most of North America, Cuba, the Bahamas, extreme northeastern Asia, and parts of Iceland and the Azores. With an area of 76 million km2 (29 million sq mi), it is the Earth's second largest tectonic plate, behind the Pacific plate.
The Nazca plate or Nasca plate, named after the Nazca region of southern Peru, is an oceanic tectonic plate in the eastern Pacific Ocean basin off the west coast of South America. The ongoing subduction, along the Peru–Chile Trench, of the Nazca plate under the South American plate is largely responsible for the Andean orogeny. The Nazca plate is bounded on the west by the Pacific plate and to the south by the Antarctic plate through the East Pacific Rise and the Chile Rise, respectively. The movement of the Nazca plate over several hotspots has created some volcanic islands as well as east–west running seamount chains that subduct under South America. Nazca is a relatively young plate in terms of the age of its rocks and its existence as an independent plate, having been formed from the breakup of the Farallon plate about 23 million years ago. The oldest rocks of the plate are about 50 million years old.
Milwaukee Deep, also known as the Milwaukee Depth, is part of the Puerto Rico Trench. Together with the surrounding area, known as Brownson Deep, the Milwaukee Deep forms an elongated depression that constitutes the floor of the trench. As there is no geomorphological distinction between the two, it has been proposed that the use of both names to refer to distinct areas should be reviewed.
The exposed geology of the Death Valley area presents a diverse and complex set of at least 23 formations of sedimentary units, two major gaps in the geologic record called unconformities, and at least one distinct set of related formations geologists call a group. The oldest rocks in the area that now includes Death Valley National Park are extensively metamorphosed by intense heat and pressure and are at least 1700 million years old. These rocks were intruded by a mass of granite 1400 Ma and later uplifted and exposed to nearly 500 million years of erosion.
The Puerto Rico Trench is located on the boundary between the North Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea, parallel to and north of Puerto Rico, where the oceanic trench reaches the deepest points in the Atlantic Ocean. The trench is associated with a complex transition from the Lesser Antilles frontal subduction zone between the South American plate and Caribbean plate to the oblique subduction zone and the strike-slip transform fault zone between the North American plate and Caribbean plate, which extends from the Puerto Rico Trench at the Puerto Rico–Virgin Islands microplate through the Cayman Trough at the Gonâve microplate to the Middle America Trench at the Cocos plate.
The Caribbean plate is a mostly oceanic tectonic plate underlying Central America and the Caribbean Sea off the northern coast of South America.
In hydrology, an oceanic basin (or ocean basin) is anywhere on Earth that is covered by seawater. Geologically, most of the ocean basins are large geologic basins that are below sea level.
The Aleutian Trench is an oceanic trench along a convergent plate boundary which runs along the southern coastline of Alaska and the Aleutian islands. The trench extends for 3,400 kilometres (2,100 mi) from a triple junction in the west with the Ulakhan Fault and the northern end of the Kuril–Kamchatka Trench, to a junction with the northern end of the Queen Charlotte Fault system in the east. It is classified as a "marginal trench" in the east as it runs along the margin of the continent. The subduction along the trench gives rise to the Aleutian Arc, a volcanic island arc, where it runs through the open sea west of the Alaska Peninsula. As a convergent plate boundary, the trench forms part of the boundary between two tectonic plates. Here, the Pacific plate is being subducted under the North American plate at a dip angle of nearly 45°. The rate of closure is 7.5 centimetres (3 in) per year.
The Philippine Trench is a submarine trench to the east of the Philippines. The trench is located in the Philippine sea of the western North Pacific Ocean and continues NNW-SSE. It has a length of approximately 1,320 kilometres and a width of about 30 km (19 mi) from the center of the Philippine island of Luzon trending southeast to the northern Maluku island of Halmahera in Indonesia. At its deepest point, the trench reaches 10,540 meters.
The Mona Passage is a strait that separates the islands of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. The Mona Passage connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean Sea and is an important shipping route between the Atlantic and the Panama Canal.
The Middle America Trench is a major subduction zone, an oceanic trench in the eastern Pacific Ocean off the southwestern coast of Middle America, stretching from central Mexico to Costa Rica. The trench is 1,700 miles (2,750 km) long and is 21,880 feet at its deepest point. The trench is the boundary between the Rivera, Cocos, and Nazca plates on one side and the North American and Caribbean plates on the other. It is the 18th-deepest trench in the world. Many large earthquakes have occurred in the area of the Middle America Trench.
The Izu–Bonin–Mariana (IBM) arc system is a tectonic plate convergent boundary in Micronesia. The IBM arc system extends over 2800 km south from Tokyo, Japan, to beyond Guam, and includes the Izu Islands, the Bonin Islands, and the Mariana Islands; much more of the IBM arc system is submerged below sealevel. The IBM arc system lies along the eastern margin of the Philippine Sea plate in the Western Pacific Ocean. It is the site of the deepest gash in Earth's solid surface, the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench.
At 02:10 PM local time (UTC-5) on 28 January 2020, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.7 struck the north side of the Cayman Trough, north of Jamaica and west of the southern tip of Cuba, with the epicenter being 80 miles (130 km) east-southeast of Cayman Brac, Cayman Islands, and 83 miles (134 km) north of Montego Bay, Jamaica. Schools in Jamaica, as well as corporate and public buildings in Miami, were evacuated after shaking was experienced in parts of the U.S. state of Florida, a region not typically thought of in-relation to seismic activity. Light shaking was also reported on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. The quake was the largest seismic event in the Caribbean since 1946. A tsunami warning for the Caribbean Sea was initially issued by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, later being withdrawn.
The 1867 Virgin Islands earthquake and tsunami occurred on November 18, at 14.45 in the Anegada Passage about 20 km southwest of Saint Thomas, Danish West Indies. The Ms 7.5 earthquake came just 20 days after the devastating San Narciso Hurricane in the same region. Tsunamis from this earthquake were some of the highest ever recorded in the Lesser Antilles. Wave heights exceeded 10 m (33 ft) in some islands in the Lesser Antilles. The earthquake and tsunami resulted in no more than 50 fatalities, although hundreds of casualties were reported.
An earthquake occurred off the coast of the Alaska Peninsula on July 28, 2021, at 10:15 p.m. local time. The large megathrust earthquake had a moment magnitude of 8.2 according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). A tsunami warning was issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) but later cancelled. The mainshock was followed by a number of aftershocks, including three that were of magnitude 5.9, 6.1 and 6.9 respectively.
The 2010 Aguas Buenas earthquake, also referred to as the 2010 Christmas Eve earthquake, occurred on December 24 at 7:43 p.m. local time in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico. It measured 5.1 on the moment magnitude scale and had a maximum Mercalli intensity of VI (Strong). The event was the largest in Puerto Rico since May 16th of the same year, and the largest to impact the San Juan metropolitan area since 1975. The earthquake was felt throughout the island of Puerto Rico, the island municipalities of Vieques and Culebra, the American and British Virgin Islands, and even in the Dominican Republic across the Mona Passage.
Mona Canyon, also known as the Mona Rift, is an 87-mile long (140 km) submarine canyon located in the Mona Passage, between the islands of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, with steep walls measuring between 1.25 and 2.17 miles (2-3.5 km) in height from bottom to top. The Mona Canyon stretches from the Desecheo Island platform, specifically the Desecheo Ridge, in the south to the Puerto Rico Trench, which contains some of the deepest points in the Atlantic Ocean, in the north. The canyon is also particularly associated with earthquakes and subsequent tsunamis, with the 1918 Puerto Rico earthquake having its epicenter in the submarine canyon.
The Puerto Rico–Virgin Islands microplate (PRVI), also known as the Puerto Rico–Virgin Islands block, is a tectonic microplate formed at the boundary zone between the Caribbean plate and the obliquely subducting North American plate.
