Amanda's Blog

                                                                                                  Volcanoes                                                                 While Venezuela is surrounded by other countries with volcanoes, they do not have any. In the image above, you can see the surrounding volcanoes but none are located in Venezuela. They do however have something interesting called "mud volcanoes"  and "fumaroles" . I know it is not the same as your average volcano and not nearly as threa...

  Earthquakes      Last week I touched a little on earthquakes in Venezuela and how being in both the South American and Caribbean plates are causing these earthquakes. It is mostly the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, that is exposed to high seismic hazard. The most catastrophic earthquake occurred on March 26, 1812, on the Bocono fault system  (see map of intensities above). This earthquake caused destruction in both Merida and Caracas, and claimed an estimated 15-20,000 lives. After 1812, there were no destructive earthquakes again until 1853, when the city of Cumana suffered a Tsunami caused by an earthquake. Thankfully, there were no fatalities however there was a lot of destruction to the city.                                              * study  results suggest that at least three seis...

  Plate Tectonics       Venezuela is on the northern coast of South America, so it falls into two tectonic plate boundaries; the South American plate and the Caribbean plate. The Caribbean plate is an oceanic plate right above the South American plate. The type of plate boundary is a convergent (subduction). The ocean plates sink beneath the continental plate, which causes many natural disasters for Venezuela like Earthquakes and flooding. According to Volcano Discovery, "in 2021, Venezuela was shaken by 7 quakes of magnitude 5.0 or above, 75 quakes between 4.0 and 5.0, 305 quakes between 3.0 and 4.0, and 254 quakes between 2.0 and 3.0. There were also 9 quakes below magnitude 2.0 which people don't normally feel." That's a total of 650 earthquakes in one year! According to Dr. Stephen Hicks, "Venezuela is one of the largest ever recorded earthquakes along the boundary between the Caribbean & South American plates."   Convergent plate boundaries oc...

                                                                                        Welcome to Venezuela!      Venezuela, officially known as the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a beautiful country in northern South America that borders the Caribbean Sea and the North Atlantic Ocean. It is the home of the worlds largest waterfall, Angel Falls. They have a population of 27.6 million with most of the population living along the Northern coast. Venezuela's official language is Spanish, however, there more than thirty indigenous languages, including Wayuu which is the most spoken indigenous language.  Chinese, Portuguese, Italian, Arabic, and German are also some of the most spoken languages in Venezuela, after ...