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Geography Of Chile
The geography of Chile is extremely diverse as the country extends from a latitude of 17° South to Cape Horn at 56° and from the ocean on the west to Andes on the east. Chile is situated in southern South America, bordering the South Pacific Ocean and a small part of the South Atlantic Ocean. Chile's territorial shape is among the world's most unusual. From north to south, Chile extends , and yet it only averages east to west. Chile reaches from the middle of South America's west coast straight down to the southern tip of the continent, where it curves slightly eastward. Diego Ramírez Islands and Cape Horn, the southernmost points in the Americas, where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans meet, are Chilean territory. Chile's northern neighbors are Peru and Bolivia, and its border with Argentina to the east, at , is the world's third-longest. The total land size is . The very long coastline of gives it the 11th largest exclusive economic zone of . Physical geography The no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southern subregion of a single continent called America. South America is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east by the Atlantic Ocean; North America and the Caribbean Sea lie to the northwest. The continent generally includes twelve sovereign states: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela; two dependent territories: the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands; and one internal territory: French Guiana. In addition, the ABC islands of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Ascension Island (dependency of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, a British Overseas Territory), Bouvet Island ( dependency of Norway), Pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richter Magnitude Scale
The Richter scale —also called the Richter magnitude scale, Richter's magnitude scale, and the Gutenberg–Richter scale—is a measure of the strength of earthquakes, developed by Charles Francis Richter and presented in his landmark 1935 paper, where he called it the "magnitude scale". This was later revised and renamed the local magnitude scale, denoted as ML or . Because of various shortcomings of the original scale, most seismological authorities now use other similar scales such as the moment magnitude scale () to report earthquake magnitudes, but much of the news media still erroneously refers to these as "Richter" magnitudes. All magnitude scales retain the logarithmic character of the original and are scaled to have roughly comparable numeric values (typically in the middle of the scale). Due to the variance in earthquakes, it is essential to understand the Richter scale uses logarithms simply to make the measurements manageable (i.e., a magnitude 3 quake factors ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antofagasta
Antofagasta () is a port city in northern Chile, about north of Santiago. It is the capital of Antofagasta Province and Antofagasta Region. According to the 2015 census, the city has a population of 402,669. After the Spanish American wars of independence, Bolivia claimed Antofagasta as part of its territory. Despite having an overwhelmingly ethnic Chilean population, Chile recognised Bolivian sovereignty of Antofagasta in 1866, but in 1879 Chile recanted its recognition of Bolivian sovereignty citing a Bolivian breach of the latest boundary treaty. Antofagasta was captured by Chile in February 14 1879 triggering the War of the Pacific (1879–83). Chilean sovereignty was officially recognised by Bolivia under the terms of the 1904 Treaty of Peace and Friendship. The city of Antofagasta is closely linked to mining activity, being a port and the chief service hub for one of Chile's major mining areas. While silver and saltpeter mining have been historically important for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peru–Chile Trench
The Peru–Chile Trench, also known as the Atacama Trench, is an oceanic trench in the eastern Pacific Ocean, about off the coast of Peru and Chile. It reaches a maximum depth of below sea level in Richards Deep () and is approximately long; its mean width is and it covers an expanse of some . The trench delineates the boundary between the subducting Nazca Plate and the overriding South American Plate. Geology The trench is a result of a convergent plate boundary, where the eastern edge of the oceanic Nazca Plate is being subducted beneath the continental South American Plate. The trench is also a part of the Chile Triple Junction, an unusual junction that consists of a mid-oceanic ridge and the Chile Rise being subducted under the South American plate at the Peru-Chile Trench. Two seamount ridges within the Nazca Plate enter the subduction zone along this trench: the Nazca Ridge and the Juan Fernández Ridge. From the Chile Triple Junction to Juan Fernández Ri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nazca Plate
The Nazca Plate or Nasca Plate, named after the Nazca region of southern Peru, is an oceanic tectonic plate in the eastern Pacific Ocean basin off the west coast of South America. The ongoing subduction, along the Peru–Chile Trench, of the Nazca Plate under the South American Plate is largely responsible for the Andean orogeny. The Nazca Plate is bounded on the west by the Pacific Plate and to the south by the Antarctic Plate through the East Pacific Rise and the Chile Rise respectively. The movement of the Nazca Plate over several hotspots has created some volcanic islands as well as east-west running seamount chains that subduct under South America. Nazca is a relatively young plate both in terms of the age of its rocks and its existence as an independent plate having been formed from the break-up of the Farallon Plate about 23 million years ago. The oldest rocks of the plate are about 50 million years old. Boundaries East Pacific and Chile Rise A triple junctio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Argentina–Chile Border
The Argentina–Chile border is the longest international border of South America and the third longest in the world after the Canada–United States border and the Kazakhstan–Russia border. With a length of , it separates Argentina from Chile along the Andes and on the islands of Tierra del Fuego. However, there are some border disputes, particularly around the Southern Patagonian Ice Field. It is the largest border of the two countries, beating the Argentina–Paraguay and Chile–Bolivia, Argentina's and Chile's second largest borders, respectively. Plot The northern end of the border is a tripoint it forms with those at the Argentina–Bolivia border and the Bolivia-Chile border in the arid Puna de Atacama plateau. The border extends south until reaching the sea at the same place the Strait of Magellan meets the Atlantic Ocean. Further south the border on the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego follows a meridian separating the island into two. This boundary reaches the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diego Ramírez Islands
The Diego Ramírez Islands ( es, Islas Diego Ramírez) are a small group of subantarctic islands located in the southernmost extreme of Chile. History The islands were first sighted on 12 February 1619 by the Spanish Garcia de Nodal expedition, and named after the cosmographer of the expedition, Diego Ramírez de Arellano. They were cited as the southernmost land mass plotted as of that time, and retained the distinction for 156 years, until the discovery of the South Sandwich Islands in 1775. In 1892, the Chilean government rented the islands to Pedro Pablo Benavides for fishing and on condition that a lighthouse, a port, and a school would be built. Later the rent was transferred to Koenigswerther and Pasinowich. The Chilean Navy established a meteorological station above Caleta Condell, a small cove on the northeastern side of Isla Gonzalo (Gonzalo Island), in 1957, and resupplies it several times each year.Dingwall (1995), p. 109. This is the southernmost inhabited outpost ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe and Asia from the "New World" of the Americas in the European perception of the World. The Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between Europe and Africa to the east, and North and South America to the west. As one component of the interconnected World Ocean, it is connected in the north to the Arctic Ocean, to the Pacific Ocean in the southwest, the Indian Ocean in the southeast, and the Southern Ocean in the south (other definitions describe the Atlantic as extending southward to Antarctica). The Atlantic Ocean is divided in two parts, by the Equatorial Counter Current, with the North(ern) Atlantic Ocean and the South(ern) Atlantic Ocean split at about 8°N. Scientific explorations of the A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cape Horn
Cape Horn ( es, Cabo de Hornos, ) is the southernmost headland of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago of southern Chile, and is located on the small Hornos Island. Although not the most southerly point of South America (which are the Diego Ramírez Islands), Cape Horn marks the northern boundary of the Drake Passage and marks where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans meet. Cape Horn was identified by mariners and first rounded in 1616 by the Dutchman Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire, who named it after the city of Hoorn in the Netherlands. For decades, Cape Horn was a major milestone on the clipper route, by which sailing ships carried trade around the world. The waters around Cape Horn are particularly hazardous, owing to strong winds, large waves, strong currents and icebergs. The need for boats and ships to round Cape Horn was greatly reduced by the opening of the Panama Canal in August 1914. Sailing around Cape Horn is still widely regarded as one of the major challenges in y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
