Small tremor could have triggered big Chilean quake

On April 1, 2014, a magnitude-8.2 earthquake shook the empty stretch of coast where Chile arcs into Peru, a region called the Iquique Gap. The gap is the only part of the 7,000 kilometer-long boundary between the Nazca and South American plates that hadn’t ruptured in the past century, despite a collision rate of almost 65 millimeters per year.

 

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Julia Rosen

Rosen holds a doctorate in geology and is a freelance science writer based in Portland, Ore. She has served as both an intern and an interim staff writer for EARTH, has also written for the Los Angeles Times and AGU’s Eos, and occasionally hosts 60-Second Science podcasts for Scientific American. Find more of her work at www.julia-rosen.com.

april 2015
news
julia rosen
hazards
earthquakes
subduction zone
chile
fault
Saturday, April 11, 2015 - 06:00

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