Alan Kafka
Weston Observatory
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
Boston College
An interesting pair of earthquakes recently occurred in the Scotia Sea region, south of Chile and Argentina: Magnitude 7.7 (November 17, 2013) and Magnitude 7.0 (November 25, 2013).
Fortunately, because of their remote location, there was little or no damage associated with these earthquakes, and they didn’t make a lot of headline news. But they illustrate some interesting earthquake and plate tectonic processes of the Scotia Plate and the Sandwich Plate.
The Scotia Plate/Sandwich Plate region is a tectonic region between the South American Plate and Antarctic Plate, and stretches from the South Sandwich Islands to the southern tip of South America. The Scotia Plate moves eastward relative to the South American plate, but the motion is complicated by the presence of a divergent boundary in the eastern portion of the Scotia Plate, delineating the western edge of the Sandwich Plate.
The two recent earthquakes had motion that is consistent with the long-term (millions-of-years time scale) plate motion (shown by the blue and white arrows in the top figure).
The second earthquake might be a remotely-triggered earthquake, an earthquake that is too far away from the first quake to be an aftershock, but (maybe?) too close in time to be just a coincidence…
Earthquakes and Related Matters 