Caribbean Tectonic Plate Research Paper

The Caribbean tectonic plate has a wide variety of height and depth within its borders. While all the land and islands are quite tall, the middle of the plate, that is mostly sea, is much more deep in some areas than others. Around the Yucatan Peninsula, Central America, and all the islands are gradual slopes that gain more depth the further from land-above-sea-level you get, however, from Honduras and Nicaragua to Jamaica, where there should be deeper sea, there is quite a lot of height but just off the southern coast of Cuba is an extremely deep trench. Around the eastern side of all the smaller islands there is another deep trench, stretching from the north side of the Dominican Republic to the middle of the string of islands north of Venezuela. …show more content…
The north and south sides have a lot less earthquakes, with the north side remaining more shallow and the south side having a wider range, but again with a lot fewer earthquakes. The middle of the plate, in the sea, there are almost no earthquakes at all. It isn’t unusual to have earthquakes along plate boundaries, as the plates aren’t the smoothest things in the world. The plates could catch or get stuck on each other until the pressure building up becomes too much and one buckles, falling or is pushed up suddenly against the other, creating an earthquake. There also tends to be earthquakes near volcanoes, which is exactly the situation on the east and west sides of the plate, though on the north and south there are no volcanoes. The east side of the plate, along Central America, there have been way bigger eruptions than the west side. The west side of the plate has also had a lot more, deeper earthquakes than the other sides of the plate. The Cocos and Caribbean plates could have subduction occurring, considering that the west side of the plate has a lot more height directly next to a deep trench, a lot of earthquake and volcanic activity, and the sea floor is a little older in that