Lecture 3 - Ring Of Fire Flashcards
Francisco Pizarro conquered what empire in 1531-1572
The inca empire
What Aztec city did Spanish conquistadors capture leading to the downfall of the Aztec civilisation. Also what year?
City of Tenochtitlán - 1521
Hernanando Cortés (1485-1547) the first conquistador told the Aztecs what?
He and his men ‘suffered from a disease of the heart which is only cured by gold’
After reaching the high Andes in 1535 what city did the conquistadors establish at the foot of Cerro Rico (mountain of the riches)?
Potosí City
The conquistadors didn’t find gold, they found silver. How did they mine this silver and how much did they make?
- in the 17thC, 160k colonists, as well as 13.5k Indians were forced to labour the mines
- In 300 years they mined, 2000 million ounces of silver, roughly £68billion
In 1964 what happened in Anchorage, Alaska
A 9.2M earthquake struck
After the 1964 quake, what USGS geologist explored Alaska
George Plafker
The town Portage was abandoned after the 1964 quake, what made the town vulnerable to flooding?
2 meters of subsidence
In the fishing village of Cordova, what was uplifted?
Harbour facilities and barnacles
What did Plafker conclude about Alaska?
That a section of the crust, 800x400km had either gone up or down
What happened to some areas of the coastline during the 1964 Alaskan earthquake?
Large tracts were uplifted, creating a new wide coastal platform or terrace
What deep trenches lie on the ocean floor of the Pacific Ocean, lie off shore and run parallel to volcanic chains or arcs?
Subduction zones
Who investigated the trenches by the Pacific Ocean?
Hugo Benioff in 1950
What was the name discovered by Hugo Benioff, that was a group of earthquake activity seismically distinct?
The Benioff zone
A subduction zone was occurring in Alaska between the relative moment of the North American and Northern Pacific Plates, what was happening?
Alaska was not riding up and over, the Pacific was sinking between the North American Plate
