Earth:Puerto Rico Bank

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Short description: Insular shelf and carbonate platform comprising Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands
Puerto Rico Bank
carbonate platform and insular shelf
File:ISS032-E-24808 - View of Puerto Rico (cropped).jpg
Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, ISS 2017
Puerto Rico Bank and major surrounding
geological features
Puerto Rico Bank is located in Caribbean
Puerto Rico Bank
Puerto Rico Bank
Location within the Caribbean
Geography
LocationCaribbean
Coordinates [ ⚑ ] : 18°17′00″N 65°36′00″W / 18.2833333°N 65.6°W / 18.2833333; -65.6
ArchipelagoPuerto Rico
Virgin Islands
Area21.000 km2 (8.108 sq mi)
Administration
 Puerto Rico
Islands and Cays140[lower-alpha 1]
 United States Virgin Islands
Islands and Cays52[lower-alpha 2][1]
 British Virgin Islands
Islands and Cays36[1]

The Puerto Rico Bank (PRB) (Spanish: Banco de Puerto Rico), also known as the Puerto Rican Bank (PRB), is a carbonate platform and insular shelf comprising the archipelagos of Puerto Rico[lower-alpha 1] and the Virgin Islands,[lower-alpha 2] located between the Greater Antilles and the Lesser Antilles in the northeastern Caribbean.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] Last subaerially exposed from the Last Glacial Maximum in the Last Glacial Period of the Late Pleistocene Age to the Northgrippian Age of the Holocene Epoch, the bank connected Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands into a single landmass until sea level rise fragmented it into the present-day islands between 10,000 and 7,000 years Before Present (8,050 and 5,050 years Before Common Era).[10][11][12][13][14][15] It is within the Puerto Rico–Virgin Islands microplate between the North American plate and Caribbean plate.

Name

Most commonly known as the Puerto Rico Bank and Puerto Rican Bank, the bank is named after the largest island within its limits, the eponymous main island of the archipelago of Puerto Rico. The part of the bank covering the Virgin Islands is occasionally referred to as the Virgin Bank.[16][17][18]

Location

The demarcated banks of Puerto Rico, Anguilla, Saba, Saint Kitts, Barbuda, Monserrat, and Guadeloupe on nautical chart, 1857[19][20][14]

Separated from the Greater Antilles by the Mona Passage and from the Lesser Antilles by the Anegada passage in the northeastern Caribbean Sea of the Atlantic Ocean, the Puerto Rico Bank compromises the main island of Puerto Rico, the Spanish Virgins Islands of Vieques and Culebra, the U.S. Virgin Islands of Saint Thomas and Saint John, and the British Virgin Islands of Jost Van Dyke, Tortola, Virgin Gorda, and Anegada. It includes all surrounding minor islands and cays of each one of the aforementioned major islands. The westernmost islands of Desecho, Mona, and Monito of Puerto Rico, and the southernmost island of Saint Croix of the U.S. Virgin Islands do not form part of the bank, as they lie on their own platforms.[21][22]

Extent

Including the island within the Puerto Rico Bank, it measures 350 km (218 mi) in length and 40 to 80 km (25 to 50 mi) in width.[4][3] Around the main island of Puerto Rico, the bank is 2 to 15 km (1.2 to 9.3 mi) wide from the southeast to the southwest, over 15 to 2 km (9.3 to 1.2 mi) wide from the southwest to northwest, and less than 2 km (1.2 mi) wide from the northwest to the northeast.[23] Around the archipelago of the Virgin Islands, the bank is 40 to 65 km (25 to 40 mi) wide.

The Puerto Rico Bank is less than 79 m (260 ft) in depth, with the portion connecting all the islands being less than 40 metres (130 feet) in depth.[24][25] All islands and cays in the archipelago of Puerto Rico, including Vieques and Culebra, are connected less than 25 metres (82 feet). Similarly, the main islands of the U.S. Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands are connected by less than 25 metres (82 feet).[26][11][27][28][29][30][31] The Spanish Virgin Islands of Vieques and Culebra and the American and British islands are separated by a narrow strait, the Virgin Passage, which is 16 km (10 m) in length and 20 to 32 m (66 to 105 ft) in depth.[16]

With an area of 21,000 km2 (8,100 sq mi),[4][32] it was last fully exposed during the Last Glacial Maximum when the sea level was 120 metres (390 feet) lower than the present-day.[15] The bank was inundated by sea level rise during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene, losing subaerial connection the main island of Puerto Rico and the Spanish Virgin Islands with the U.S. Virgin Islands and British Virgin Islands 10,000 to 8,000 years Before Present ago (8,050 to 6,050 years Before Christ ago). The main island of Puerto Rico with Vieques, and the U.S. Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands with each other lost their land connection 7,000 years BP ago (5,050 years BC ago), while the main island of Puerto Rico with some of its minor islands, cays, and islets 3,000 BP years ago (1,050 BC years ago).[10][11]

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Excluding the westernmost islands of Desecheo, Mona, and Monito, which are politically part of the archipelago of Puerto Rico but are not geologically part of the Puerto Rico Bank, as they lie on their own platforms.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Excluding the southernmost island of Saint Croix, which is politically part of the Virgin Islands but is not geologically part of the Puerto Rico Bank, as it lies on its own platform.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Where is the U.S. Virgin Islands: Geography" (in en-US). https://www.vinow.com/general_usvi/geography/. 
  2. ↑ "Marine Regions · Puerto Rico Trench (Trench)". https://www.marineregions.org/gazetteer.php?p=details&id=4587. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Geology and Hydrogeology of the Caribbean Islands Aquifer System of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands". https://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/pp1419/pdf/BOOK.PDF. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "Archipelagic genetics in a widespread Caribbean anole". https://faculty.umb.edu/liam.revell/pdfs/Reynolds_etal_2017.JBI.pdf. 
  5. ↑ "The Bunce Fault and Strain Partitioning in the Northern Lesser Antilles". https://www.researchgate.net/figure/of-observed-and-imaged-tectonic-structures-interpreted-as-related-to-strain-partitioning_fig5_335211974. 
  6. ↑ "Sea level, topography and island diversity: Phylogeography of the Puerto Rican Red-eyed Coquí, Eleutherodactylus antillensis". https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-the-Puerto-Rican-Bank-a-and-b-and-St-Croix-c-illustrating-the-topography-of_fig2_233722332. 
  7. ↑ "The polyphased tectonic evolution of the Anegada Passage in the northern Lesser Antilles subduction zone". https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Morphotectonic-interpretation-of-the-Anegada-Passage-according-to-Jany-et-al-1990-in_fig2_322746616. 
  8. ↑ "Exploring Puerto Rico's Seamounts, Trenches, and Troughs: Background: Mission Plan" (in EN-US). https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/explorations/ex1502/background/plan/welcome.html. 
  9. ↑ "Island lists of West Indian amphibians and reptiles". pp. 137–147. https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/35/2017/03/bulletin-vol51no2.pdf. 
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 "Biogeography of Puerto Rican Bank". https://www.researchgate.net/publication/32252260. 
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 "Boraginaceae Varronia rupicola (Urb.) Brtton : biogeog- raphy, systematic placement and conservation genetics of a threatened species endemic to the Caribbean". pp. 86–87. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/333900666.pdf. 
  12. ↑ "The beetles of the Lesser Antilles (Insecta, Coleoptera): diversity and distributions". pp. 10 and 16. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?params=/context/insectamundi/article/1967/&path_info=0460_Peck_2016.pdf. 
  13. ↑ "Por el camino verde: Long-term tropical socioecosystem dynamics and the Anthropocene as seen from Puerto Rico". https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Topographical-and-bathymetric-map-of-Mona-Puerto-Rico-and-the-Virgin-Islands-The_fig1_281849968. 
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 "Bats of St. Vincent, Lesser Antilles". https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Bathymetric-map-of-Puerto-Rico-and-the-Lesser-Antilles-Dark-grey-shading-represents_fig2_328653496. 
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 "The Late Pleistocene Human Settlement of Interior North America: The Role of Physiography and Sea Level Change". https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Caribbean-and-Gulf-of-Mexico-ca-20-000-cal-yr-BP-showing-how-movement-throughout_fig5_263924190. 
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 "Virgin Islands". https://www.nauticalcharts.noaa.gov/publications/coast-pilot/files/cp5/CPB5_C14_WEB.pdf. 
  17. ↑ "Archaeological reconnaissance of the Island of St. John, United States Virgin Islands" (in en). p. 2. https://original-ufdc.uflib.ufl.edu/CA01200016/00001/10x. 
  18. ↑ "Bats of Guana, British Virgin Islands". https://digitallibrary.amnh.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/0e5e5c4a-fd42-4a54-87a7-ebb1cb27af7e/content. 
  19. ↑ fig2 361960623 "Coexistence of Adjacent Siliciclastic, Carbonate, and Mixed Sedimentary Systems: An Example From Seafloor Morphology in the Northern Lesser Antilles Forearc". https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Data-from-ANTITHESIS-2013-2016-and-CASEIS-2016-cruises-in-the-NLAS-Black-lines fig2 361960623. 
  20. ↑ fig6 277893074 "Genetic Evidence of Hybridization between the Endangered Native Species Iguana delicatissima and the Invasive Iguana iguana (Reptilia, Iguanidae) in the Lesser Antilles: Management Implications". https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Maps-of-the-distribution-of-the-two-iguana-species-in-Lesser-Antilles-The-left-map fig6 277893074. 
  21. ↑ Schärer-Umpierre, Michelle T.; Mateos-Molina, Daniel; Appeldoorn, Richard; Bejarano, Ivonne; Hernández-Delgado, Edwin A.; Nemeth, Richard S.; Nemeth, Michael I.; Valdés-Pizzini, Manuel et al. (2014-01-01), Johnson, Magnus L.; Sandell, Jane, eds., "Chapter Four - Marine Managed Areas and Associated Fisheries in the US Caribbean", Advances in Marine Biology, Marine Managed Areas and Fisheries (Academic Press) 69: pp. 129–152, doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-800214-8.00004-9, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780128002148000049, retrieved 2024-10-10 
  22. ↑ "Island lists of West Indian amphibians and reptiles". https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-greater-Puerto-Rico-and-adjacent-island-banks-including-the-Virgin-Islands_fig3_265201548. 
  23. ↑ "A 50-year Reconstruction of Fisheries Catch in Puerto Rico". https://www.seaaroundus.org/doc/publications/wp/2015/Appeldoorn-et-al-Puerto-Rico.pdf. 
  24. ↑ "Baroclinic Coupling Improves Depth‐Integrated Modeling of Coastal Sea Level Variations Around Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands". March 2019. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Bathymetric-depths-around-the-Puerto-Rico-and-US-Virgin-Islands-region-Positions-and_fig2_331095079. 
  25. ↑ "PR/USVI Prioritization Mapping Inventory" (in en-us). https://noaa.hub.arcgis.com/maps/3849f7c4a0ca4fe8a54a4bc853da86b5/explore?location=18.829308,-66.136540,7.66. 
  26. ↑ "Baroclinic Coupling Improves Depth-Integrated Modeling of Coastal Sea Level Variations Around Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands". https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Bathymetric-depths-around-the-Puerto-Rico-and-US-Virgin-Islands-region-Positions-and_fig2_331095079. 
  27. ↑ CARICOOS. "CariCOOS" (in en). https://www.caricoos.org/waveclimateatlas/technical-overview. 
  28. ↑ "New species and new records of Cumacea (Crustacea: Peracarida: Cumacea) from mesophotic reefs of Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands, Caribbean Sea". https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Map-of-Puerto-Rico-and-the-US-Virgin-Islands-showing-collection-areas-The-extended_fig1_310815856. 
  29. ↑ "Potential Structuring Forces on a Shelf Edge Upper Mesophotic Coral Ecosystem in the US Virgin Islands". https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Maps-of-the-study-area-at-successively-higher-spatial-resolution-Blue-boxes-indicate-the_fig1_304500195. 
  30. ↑ "Physical drivers of community structure and growth among mesophotic coral ecosystems surrounding St. Thomas, U. S. Virgin Islands". https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Cross-section-of-the-Puerto-Rican-shelf-where-the-US-Virgin-Islands-are-located-Sites_fig1_313633703. 
  31. ↑ "Radiocarbon in otoliths of tropical marine fishes: Reference ΔC chronology for north Caribbean waters". https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Sampling-region-in-the-north-Caribbean-Map-indicates-sample-locations-for-red-hind_fig2_351539742. 
  32. ↑ "Linking micro- and macroevolutionary perspectives to evaluate the role of Quaternary sea-level oscillations in island diversification". https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/141544/evo13384.pdf?sequence=1. 



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