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

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

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