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The Puerto Rico Trench has produced earthquakes greater than magnitude 8.0 and is considered capable of continuing to do so. [ 19 ] [ 20 ] According to NASA , beneath the trench is a mass so dense it deflects gravitational pull on the surface of the ocean, causing it to dip somewhat.
Puerto Rico Puerto Rico Trench *8.0–8.5 IX – – Possibly the strongest earthquake to have hit Puerto Rico since the European colonization. It was strongly felt throughout the island and major damage was reported everywhere except for in the south (although there were minor damage in colonial buildings in Ponce).
Puerto Rico lies at the highly oblique convergent boundary between the Caribbean plate and the North American plate. A separate Puerto Rico–Virgin Islands microplate has been identified based on GPS observations. [24] To the north the North American plate is being subducted beneath this microplate along the Puerto Rico Trench.
A 5.4-magnitude earthquake struck Puerto Rico on the morning of Saturday, May 2, causing damage to buildings on the island.According to the US Geological Survey, the quake hit just off the ...
A 5.5-magnitude earthquake struck Puerto Rico on the morning of Saturday, May 2, causing damage to buildings on the island, including to the Ponce Massacre Museum, a human rights museum and ...
Fajardo, the largest town in Puerto Rico within the direct vicinity of the earthquake, completely lost its church and several of its civic structures. [10] The historic parish churches of Bayamón and Juana Díaz were also damaged as a result of the earthquakes. [11] [12] An aftershock with a magnitude of M h 6.5 occurred on March 17, 1868 ...
The Puerto Rico Trench is at a complex transition from the subduction boundary to the south and the transform boundary to the west. The eastern boundary is a subduction zone, the Lesser Antilles subduction zone , where oceanic crust of the South American plate is being subducted under the Caribbean plate.
Part of this motion is absorbed by the subduction of the North American plate beneath the Caribbean plate, resulting in the formation of the Puerto Rico Trench and a region of intermediate-depth earthquakes. Further to the south and east, the boundary arcs around Puerto Rico and the northernLesser Antilles, creating an active island arc.