Brazil's relations to tectonic plate boundaries


South American PlateBrazil is located on the South American Plate. This is the smallest of the major plates and is about 43,600,000km^2 in size. This plate includes the continents of South America and a large part of the Atlantic Ocean. This plate is bounded by the African plate in the east, Nazca plate to the west, Antarctic plate and Scotia plate in the south, and the Caribbean plate and North American plate in the north. The eastern side lies on the Atlantic Ocean at the divergent plate boundary (two plates that are moving away from each other and new crust is forming from magma that rises to the surface between them). On the other hand the west side of the South America experiences many harsh earthquakes because of the convergent plate tectonic boundaries (two plates that are moving toward each other). The South American Plate pulls apart from the African Plate and by doing this they create the youngest oceanic crust in the world (divergent). However on the other side the Nazca plate has overtime converged with South America.

Sources: https://americastectonics.weebly.com/south-american-plate.html
https://earthhow.com/south-american-plate/

Comments

  1. Ana GGFebruary 8, 2020 at 3:34 PM

    Very nice tectonic explanation. Where are your sources of information? Please add so we can read more about it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Leticia FerreiraFebruary 8, 2020 at 4:30 PM

      Totally spaced on that part, I will add them now. Sorry about that.

      Delete
  2. Ana GGFebruary 10, 2020 at 12:18 PM

    thank you.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mass Wasting in Brazil

Image
Mass waisting also known as  mass movement, is the geomorphic process where soil, sand, regolith, and rock move downslope typically as a solid, continuous or discontinuous mass, largely under the force of gravity, frequently with characteristics of a flow as in debris flows and mudflows.  Landslides are natural processes triggered by complex relationships between many conditioning factors. Landslide in 2020 In Rio de Janeiro city, intense rainstorms combined with steep slopes, usually occupied by slums, create the perfect conditions for landslides.  Since January of 2020, heavy   rainstorms   in the   Southeast Region   of Brazil have caused flooding and landslides in the states of   Minas Gerais , Espírito Santo and   Rio de Janeiro.  The state capital of Minas Gerais,   Belo Horizonte , reported that this years rainfall is the highest it has been in over 110 years.   As of late January of 2020, at least 70 people ...
Read more

Volcanic Activity in Brazil

Image
Brazil's Volcanic Activity Brazil is located at the center of the South American plate, which means it is far away from the edges of tectoni c plates. Unlike Chili and other countries located on the continent’s western edge, and are part of the volcanic “Ring of Fire”. This is the reason why there hasn’t been any active volcanoes in Brazil in a while. W hile there hasn’t been any active volcanic eruptions in Brazil in recent years, there are many signs that suggest that the country has experienced volcanic activity in the past. Rio’s Sleeping Giant (O  Gigante Adormecido ) Just above Rio de Janeiro is the “Patole” which is a 60-mile-long sheet of pure granite that was formed by consolidated igneous rock from an ancient volcanic eruption. This was once a massive reservoir of magma but because it never made its way to ground level it instead formed the Serra dos Orgaos mountains. It is believed that in the past the Patole was a gigantic volcano but has since...
Read more