Fault Location and Technical Details of Earthquake

Expedition members:

We've been doing our research on January's earthquake in Costa Rica and wanted to share some of our findings for your background info.

First of all, the earthquake occurred on the Caribbean Plate, just to the east of its boundary with the neighboring Cocos Plate. The Cocos plate subducts below the Caribbean plate, causing a slip-strike mechanism (USGS, 2009, Earthquake Summary). Here's an animation of slip-strike mechanisms, to give you an idea of what it looked like: Slip-strike animation The quake was a magnitude 6.1 on the Richter scale.

As you can see from the map below (USGS, 2009, Earthquake Summary), the epicenter of the quake was almost directly north of the capital, San Jose, where we will all be flying into. It appears as air traffic is currently fully operational.



We'll be back with more information on the quake, including details on how it is affecting the residents and our plans to paddle.

References:

USGS. 2009. Earthquake summary. Retrieved on July 4, 2009 from: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2009bpba.php#summary

USGS. 2009. Earthquake location. Retrieved on July 4, 2009 from: http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/eq_depot/2009/eq_090108_bpba/neic_bpba_l.html