Week 2: Peru's Tectonics and Plates

Hello everyone, 

I hope you all are doing well :) I chose to research the country of Peru because I’ve always had an admiration for the culture and half of my family lives in Cusco. It’s been very interesting learning about this country and I’m excited to explain what I have learned this week about Peru’s tectonic plates and boundaries. 

When I was researching I found out that Peru is on a convergent plate boundary. Looking back at this week’s lesson, I was able to understand that convergent means that Peru’s plates are “toward one another.” The countries of Peru and Chile have created a trench called the Nazca Plate (according to The Geological Society). It follows along the border of Peru and Chile and is also part of the Ring of Fire.The Nazca Plate is an oceanic plate that shares convergent and divergent boundaries which force underneath the South American plate at a rate of “4 cm a year” (according to The Guardian). Peru also contains the Altiplano plate which due to the subduction of one plate under the other has caused the number of volcanoes in the western/mountain region to rise (according to the Earth Observatory).

The pressure from the convergent plates and location has been drastically shown through catastrophic earthquakes in Peru and some of the most deadly earthquakes in the world in (Peru’s bordering country) Chile. Although the people along the West coast of South America have experienced intense seismic activity, they have been able to persevere and adapt to their environments.

Work Cited: 

https://www.geolsoc.org.uk/Plate-Tectonics/Chap3-Plate-Margins/Convergent/Oceanic-continental

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/aug/16/naturaldisasters.jamessturcke

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/1152/altiplano-south-america