Skip to main content

Guyana Tectonic Plates

Guyana is apart of the Caribbean Plate which is mainly a oceanic tectonic plate underlying Central America and the Caribbean Sea off the north coast of South America. The Caribbean  Plate also borders the North American Plate, South American Plate, The Nazca Plate and the Cocos Plate. Of these regions are intense seismic activity, including very frequent earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and even tsunamis.

The Greenstone belts of northern Guyana which were formed by volcanoes on the oceanic crust, between 2.3 and 2.2 billion years ago, over a span of over 100 million years ago became part of a large mountain range caused by the pressure of convergent tectonic plates.


References:

Rosa, Correa. Journal of South America Science. sciencedirect.com. 2014,July
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0895981114000170

Admin, Earth Matters: Geology of Guyana. guyanachronical.com. 14 April, 2012
http://guyanachronicle.com/2012/04/14/earth-matters-geology-of-guyana

Comments

  1. Ana GGFebruary 3, 2018 at 2:10 PM

    Thank you for updating your post this week. The link you provided was very useful. I have a comment. When I did a bit more of research on Guyana's location, it happens that is located to the south of the Caribbean plate, and inside the South American plate, although the Caribbean plate is close to the north...FYI. See link below for more information.

    https://yeseniadj.weebly.com/

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Kick 'em Jenny: Submarine Volcano in the Caribbean Sea

     Although Guyana hasn't had any recent volcano activity, Kick 'em Jenny is a submarine volcano in the Caribbean Sea north of Grenada. The image below shows Grenada, towards the top of the map, right off the coast of Georgetown Guyana.      Kick 'em Jenny is the only live volcano in the Eastern Caribbean and sits about 180m below the surface of the sea. Kick 'em Jenny has erupted a total of 14 times and its most recent eruption was recorded in April 2017. This submarine volcano was discovered in  1939 so it is about 78 years old. As noted earlier, Guyana has not had any recent volcanoes but Kick 'em Jenny can pose a major threat if it erupts, it can cause a massive tsunami that can ruin the communities around Guyana including Georgetown.      If Kick 'em Jenny erupts, the proper steps will be taken to ensure the safe evacuation of anyone in the path of destruction due to The Seismic research Unit. The ...
1 comment
Read more

Extreme Weather in Grove City

The National Weather Service reported that investigators have concluded that a tornado with an estimated speed of 100-110 mph caused significant damage to the city of Grove City, just south of Colombia. The National Weather Service sent a storm-damage survey team to Grove City and announced before 11 am Wednesday that the high winds were an EF1 tornado. “Our survey team has preliminary determined that an EF1 tornado with estimated wind speeds between 100-110 MPH was responsible for damage in the Grove City, near Ohio”. http://t.co/uDssG5T5DK EF1 is towards the low end of the scale the National Weather Service uses to categorize tornadoes with EF5 being the most severe with winds reaching 200 mph. The tornado in Grove City was nearly classified as a EF2 as winds were almost up to 111 mph. As a result of the extreme weather in Grove City Ohio, 14,535 Ohio residents were without power as of Wednesday morning.      http://www.outaemap.aepohio.co...
2 comments
Read more