January 12, 2010 (21:53:10 UTC)
Magnitude 7.0 Haiti
A major earthquake occurred Tuesday 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.
Teachable Moment Presentations
- 12 slide Teachable Moment Powerpoint (zipped, includes animation)
Set of slides created in the first hours after the earthquake with information to use in middle school, high school or college classes. - University of Portland/IRIS Earthquake Notice (pdf)
- Converted Teachable Moment Powerpoint (pdf)
- updated 20 Jan Follow up: Building Damage in Earthquakes (pdf)
Animations and Visualizations
- Seismic Wave Propagation (Youtube / Quicktime)
- Why didn't the magnitude 7 earthquake in Haiti cause a large tsunami? (Youtube / Quicktime)
- USArray Wave Visualization Globe (Youtube / Quicktime 15MB)
-watch seismic waves from the Haiti earthquake as they cross the USArray's seismometer deployment. Blue circles indicate a seismometer moving down; red circles indicate a seismometer moving up.
Click here to learn more. - Six Month Seismic Monitor Central America Earthquake Activity Map (Youtube / Quicktime 6.7MB)
- updated 20 Jan Seismic Monitor View of the Haiti earthquake and aftershocks (Flash) or with color coded magnitude (Quicktime).
To save the videos above, right click a Quicktime link and choose "Save Target As".
USGS Resources
En Español
- Presentación en Español (ppt 3.28MB)
- Periódico La Jornada - Haití, devastado por un terremoto; el país más pobre del hemisferio clama por ayuda
- Periódico La Nación - Dramática búsqueda de sobrevivientes en Haití tras el devastador sismo
- El Nacional (Republica dominicana) - Miles de muertos; muchos siguen atrapados
- Claridad- Haití: A dos días del terremoto
Additional Haiti Earthquake Resources
- added 17 Feb Security cameras at the U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince
- added 15 Feb Haiti Field reconnaisance - Roger Bilham
- added 1 Feb NSF Geophysicists in Haiti Blog
- added 28 Jan Scientists Return to Haiti to Assess Possibility of Another Major Quake (NSF)
- added 27 Jan USGS Assessment of Aftershock Hazards in Haiti
- added 20 Jan Seismology and Tectonics of Hispaniola (ppt 17.5MB)- Jay Pulliam, Paul Mann, Lisa Gahagen
- added 20 Jan Haiti Earthquake 2010: Facts, Engineering, Images & Maps - MCEER
- added 20 Jan The 10% Solution: How to Respond to the Haitian Earthquake- Brian Tucker (GeoHazards International) January 14th Guardian (UK)
- Recent Geology/Geophysics on Haiti
added 20 Jan Jackson School of Geophysics: The University of Texas at Austin
added 20 Jan Purdue University: Eric Calais - Earthquake 101 video on the Haiti earthquake from NBC Nightly News
- Natural Hazard and Vulnerability Assessment of the Caribbean, Fall 2009 Class Project, College of Charleston, Charleston, SC (ppt 2MB)
-Class project for Geology 213: Natural Hazards which identified Haiti as having the highest risk of damaging future earthquake - Deformation of Jamaica and motion of the Gonave microplate from GPS and seismic data
Authored by C. DeMets and M. Wiggins-Grandison (pdf 1.5MB)
-2006 research paper on the motion of the Gonave microplate using GPS and seismic data gathered on the island of Jamaica. Haiti and Jamaica extend onto the Gonave microplate - Woods Hole Science Center
-Caribbean tsunami and earthquake hazards studies with movies, diagrams and recent research publications - Observed and predicted Caribbean GPS site velocities (pdf) from
"Is There a Northern Lesser Antilles Forearc Block?" López, A., S. Stein, T.
Dixon, G. Sella, E. Calais, P. Jansma, J. Weber, and P. LaFemina, Geophys.
Res. Lett., 33, doi:10.1029/2005GL025293. - Stress, strain and topo maps from UNAVCO site
- US Agency for International Development
