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Guaymas Fault
The Guaymas Fault, named for the city of Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico, is a major right lateral-moving transform fault which runs along the seabed of the Gulf of California. It is an integral part of the Gulf of California Rift Zone, the northern extremity of the East Pacific Rise. The Guaymas Fault runs from the San Pedro Martir Basin located at the southern end of the San Lorenzo Fault (the next transform to the north), and extends southward to the Guaymas Basin, a heavily sedimented rift which includes both continental and oceanic crust and contains numerous hydrothermal vents. The Guaymas Fault is often grouped together with the three transform faults to its north as the Guaymas Transform Fault System. These faults are, from north to south, the Ballenas, Partida, San Lorenzo, and Guaymas. This system of fault extends some 325 km, linking the Delfin Basin The Delfin Basin (''delfín'' is Spanish for "dolphin") is a pair of interconnected submarine depressions located on ...
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Guaymas
Guaymas () is a city in Guaymas Municipality, in the southwest part of the state of Sonora, in northwestern Mexico. The city is south of the state capital of Hermosillo, and from the U.S. border. The municipality is located on the Gulf of California and the western edge of the Sonoran Desert and has a hot, dry climate and of beaches. The municipality's formal name is Guaymas de Zaragoza and the city's formal name is the Heroica Ciudad de Guaymas. The city proper is mostly an industrial port and is the principal port for the state of Sonora. The city has a well-attended annual carnival, which has been held since 1888. Nearby, San Carlos and its beaches are major tourist attractions. History Before the arrival of the Europeans, the bay of Guaymas was dominated by the Guaymas, Seri and Yaqui tribes. In 1539, two Spanish ships, the ''Santa Águeda'' and the ''Trinidad'', arrived in Guaymas Bay. They were commanded by Francisco de Ulloa, who called the area "the port of ports." So ...
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Rift
In geology, a rift is a linear zone where the lithosphere is being pulled apart and is an example of extensional tectonics. Typical rift features are a central linear downfaulted depression, called a graben, or more commonly a half-graben with normal faulting and rift-flank uplifts mainly on one side. Where rifts remain above sea level they form a rift valley, which may be filled by water forming a rift lake. The axis of the rift area may contain volcanic rocks, and active volcanism is a part of many, but not all, active rift systems. Major rifts occur along the central axis of most mid-ocean ridges, where new oceanic crust and lithosphere is created along a divergent boundary between two tectonic plates. ''Failed rifts'' are the result of continental rifting that failed to continue to the point of break-up. Typically the transition from rifting to spreading develops at a triple junction where three converging rifts meet over a hotspot. Two of these evolve to the poi ...
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Strike-slip Faults
In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic forces, with the largest forming the boundaries between the plates, such as the megathrust faults of subduction zones or transform faults. Energy release associated with rapid movement on active faults is the cause of most earthquakes. Faults may also displace slowly, by aseismic creep. A ''fault plane'' is the plane that represents the fracture surface of a fault. A ''fault trace'' or ''fault line'' is a place where the fault can be seen or mapped on the surface. A fault trace is also the line commonly plotted on geologic maps to represent a fault. A ''fault zone'' is a cluster of parallel faults. However, the term is also used for the zone of crushed rock along a single fault. Prolonged motion along closely spaced faults can blur the ...
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Geology Of Mexico
The geography of Mexico describes the geographic features of Mexico, a country in the Americas. Mexico is located at about 23° N and 102° W in the southern portion of North America. From its farthest land points, Mexico is a little over in length. Mexico is bounded to the north by the United States (specifically, from west to east, by California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas), to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, to the east by the Gulf of Mexico, and to the southeast by Belize, Guatemala, and the Caribbean Sea. The northernmost constituent of Latin America, it is the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world. Mexico is the world's 13th largest country, three times the size of Texas. Almost all of Mexico is on the North American Plate, with small parts of the Baja California Peninsula in the northwest on the Pacific and Cocos Plates. Some geographers include the portion east of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec including the Yucatán Peninsula within North Amer ...
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Delfin Basin
The Delfin Basin (''delfín'' is Spanish for "dolphin") is a pair of interconnected submarine depressions located on the seabed of the northern Gulf of California. The northernmost of these is called the Upper Delfin Basin while the southernmost is called the Lower Delfin Basin. Both of these features are areas of subsidence caused by extensional forces imparted by a spreading center associated with the East Pacific Rise. The two basins are linked by a short transform fault which was the apparent source of an earthquake of magnitude 5.5 on November 26, 1997. The Delfin Basin is linked to the Guaymas Basin located about 325 km to the south by a series of four transform faults called the Guaymas Transform Fault System. It is also linked to the north with the Consag Basin by way of a poorly defined deformation zone. See also *Gulf of California Rift Zone The Gulf of California Rift Zone (GCRZ) is the northernmost extension of the East Pacific Rise which extends some from th ...
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Ballenas Fault
The Ballenas Fault is a transform fault located on the seabed of the Gulf of California, extending through the Canal de Ballenas which separates the Isla Ángel de la Guarda from the Baja California Peninsula. The fault is an integral part of the East Pacific Rise, linking the Delfin Basin The Delfin Basin (''delfín'' is Spanish for "dolphin") is a pair of interconnected submarine depressions located on the seabed of the northern Gulf of California. The northernmost of these is called the Upper Delfin Basin while the southernmost is ... in the north with a smaller spreading center to the south. The fault is considered the northernmost member of a grouping of four transform faults called the Guaymas Transform Fault System. The Ballenas Fault produced a magnitude 6.9 earthquake on August 3, 2009. References * Geology of Mexico Geography of Baja California {{tectonics-stub ...
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Hydrothermal Vent
A hydrothermal vent is a fissure on the seabed from which geothermally heated water discharges. They are commonly found near volcanically active places, areas where tectonic plates are moving apart at mid-ocean ridges, ocean basins, and hotspots. Hydrothermal deposits are rocks and mineral ore deposits formed by the action of hydrothermal vents. Hydrothermal vents exist because the earth is both geologically active and has large amounts of water on its surface and within its crust. Under the sea, they may form features called black smokers or white smokers. Relative to the majority of the deep sea, the areas around hydrothermal vents are biologically more productive, often hosting complex communities fueled by the chemicals dissolved in the vent fluids. Chemosynthetic bacteria and Archaea form the base of the food chain, supporting diverse organisms, including giant tube worms, clams, limpets and shrimp. Active hydrothermal vents are thought to exist on Jupiter's moon Europa an ...
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Oceanic Crust
Oceanic crust is the uppermost layer of the oceanic portion of the tectonic plates. It is composed of the upper oceanic crust, with pillow lavas and a dike complex, and the lower oceanic crust, composed of troctolite, gabbro and ultramafic cumulates. The crust overlies the rigid uppermost layer of the mantle. The crust and the rigid upper mantle layer together constitute oceanic lithosphere. Oceanic crust is primarily composed of mafic rocks, or sima, which is rich in iron and magnesium. It is thinner than continental crust, or sial, generally less than 10 kilometers thick; however, it is denser, having a mean density of about 3.0 grams per cubic centimeter as opposed to continental crust which has a density of about 2.7 grams per cubic centimeter. The crust uppermost is the result of the cooling of magma derived from mantle material below the plate. The magma is injected into the spreading center, which consists mainly of a partly solidified crystal mush derived from earlier ...
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Continental Crust
Continental crust is the layer of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks that forms the geological continents and the areas of shallow seabed close to their shores, known as continental shelves. This layer is sometimes called ''sial'' because its bulk composition is richer in aluminium silicates (Al-Si) and has a lower density compared to the oceanic crust, called ''sima'' which is richer in magnesium silicate (Mg-Si) minerals. Changes in seismic wave velocities have shown that at a certain depth (the Conrad discontinuity), there is a reasonably sharp contrast between the more felsic upper continental crust and the lower continental crust, which is more mafic in character. The continental crust consists of various layers, with a bulk composition that is intermediate (SiO2 wt% = 60.6). The average density of continental crust is about , less dense than the ultramafic material that makes up the mantle, which has a density of around . Continental crust is also less dense ...
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Guaymas Basin
The Guaymas Basin is a marginal rift basin, the largest such basin in the Gulf of California. It consists of two axial troughs (northern and southern). The basin results from the activity of one of the several spreading centers in the Gulf. The basin is linked to the Carmen Fault to the south, and the Guaymas Fault to the north. The Guaymas seafloor has high heat flow, hydrothermal plumes, and hydrocarbon seeps. Features Northern trough Southern trough Biology Especially in the southern trough, the Guaymas Basin supports a unique and vibrant ecosystem. Heterotrophs consume organic matter rained down from the productive surface waters, while chemolithoautotrophs metabolize chemicals in the reduced hydrothermal fluid (often cycling these chemicals with syntrophic partners). Of note are the colonies of ''Riftia'' tubeworms, ''Beggiatoa'' and other microbial mats, and thermophilic A thermophile is an organism—a type of extremophile—that thrives at relatively h ...
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Sonora
Sonora (), officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Sonora ( en, Free and Sovereign State of Sonora), is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the Administrative divisions of Mexico, Federal Entities of Mexico. The state is divided into Municipalities of Sonora, 72 municipalities; the capital (and largest) city of which being Hermosillo, located in the center of the state. Other large cities include Ciudad Obregón, Nogales, Sonora, Nogales (on the Mexico–United States border, Mexico-United States border), San Luis Río Colorado, and Navojoa. Sonora is bordered by the states of Chihuahua (state), Chihuahua to the east, Baja California to the northwest and Sinaloa to the south. To the north, it shares the Mexico–United States border, U.S.–Mexico border primarily with the state of Arizona with a small length with New Mexico, and on the west has a significant share of the coastline of the Gulf of California. Sonora's natural geography is divided into three ...
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