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AGU Media ContactsMagnitude 7.0 earthquake strikes Haiti, 12 January 2010
12 January 2010
Haiti was struck by a major earthquake that toppled the presidential palace and hillside shanties alike and killed possibly thousands of people. The total number of people killed and injured will not be known for some time. The earthquake occurred in the boundary region separating the Caribbean plate and the North America plate. This plate boundary is dominated by left-lateral strike slip motion and compression, and accommodates about 20 mm/y slip, with the Caribbean plate moving eastward with respect to the North America plate.
Resources
Preliminary analysis of the Haiti earthquake from Tectonics group at the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP)- USGS Open File Report on Haiti Earthquake
- Intrepid geophysicists blog from Haiti — AGU members embark on an expedition to Haiti to carry out a GPS survey and learn about how the fault slipped and how the crust continues to deform after the Jan. 12 earthquake.
- IRIS Consortium's Teachable Moments page
- Summary, maps, and scientific and technical data from the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program
- IRIS Consortium's Seismic Monitor (global)
- USGS CoreCast
- GeoHazards International
- Read in JGR–Solid Earth
Uri ten Brink and Jian Lin, Stress interactions between subduction earthquakes and forearc strike-slip faults: Modeling and application to the northern Caribbean plate boundary, J. Geophys. Res., 109, B12, doi:10.1029/2004JB003031, 2004 - Haiti Earthquake Underscores Need For Better Use of Seismic Information
- AGU member, Roger Bilham, returns from Haiti
- AGU's Natural Hazards Focus Group resources for Haiti earthquake
- UNAVCO response to the Haiti earthquake
- A book about earthquakes on our increasingly urbanized planet by AGU members Susan Hough and Roger Bilham: After the Earth Quakes: Elastic Rebound on an Urban Planet (Oxford University Press 2005)
Major Tectonic Boundaries: Subduction Zones -purple, Ridges -red and Transform Faults -green
Credit: U.S. Geological Survey, National Earthquake Information Center World Data Center for Seismology, Denver