Since the late 1960’s significant efforts have been done by Earth Science researchers, in the beginning particularly from American scientists, to decipher the nature and amount of motion of the Caribbean Plate relative to its adjacent North- and South-American plates, and the tectonic configuration of its northern and southern plate boundaries, the latter mostly located in northern Venezuela and Colombia, and Trinidad-Tobago, to which I devoted many years of research. In 2001, using GPS observations, I reported the discovery that the Caribbean moves ~20 mm/yr in the eastward direction relative to South-America, ending a discussion that started in the early 1960’s.
In a series of papers published after 2000 I characterize and quantify the amount and nature of motion of a series of geological faults that conform the southern of the Caribbean Plate, among them the El Pilar in eastern Venezuela, San Sebastián/La Victoria and Morrocoy in north-central Venezuela, Boconó in western Venezuela; and discovered a subduction of the Caribbean plate beneath South-America in norwestern Venezuela and Colombia; and of the Atlantic beneath the Caribbean in the region of Trinidad. Here I present the papers mentioned above.
Fernández F., O. J. Pérez y J. A. Rial, Sismotectónica del área del Caribe y occidente de Venezuela, Boletín de Geología, 7:4, 669-686, 1977
Pérez O. J., R. Husid and A. Espinoza, A study of strong motions from a set of Nicaraguan earthquakes and their relationship to damage, Proc. VI World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, 1, 946-1,952, Indian Society of Earthquake Technology, Ed. Sarita Prakashan, Meerut, India, 1977
Pérez O. J. and Y. P. Aggarwal, Present-day Tectonics of the Southeastern Caribbean and Northeastern Venezuela, Journal of Geophysical Research, 86, 10791-10804, 1981
Suárez R., V. Adams and O. J. Pérez, Instrumentation and software development for the seismological network of Venezuela, Proc. 15th International Symposium on Mini- and Macro-computers, 1, 89-93, México City, México, 1981
Pérez O. J., Seismotectonics of western Venezuela and Southwestern Caribbean, Annales Geophysicae, 14, 88-91, 1996, The Netherlands.
Pérez O. J., M. A. Jaimes and E. Garciacaro, Microseismicity Evidence for Subduction of the Caribbean Plate Beneath the South American Plate in Northwestern Venezuela, Journal of Geophysical Research, 102, 17875-17882, 1997
Pérez O. J. , M. A. Jaimes and E. Garciacaro, Subducción de la Placa del Caribe Bajo la Suramericana en el Noroeste de Venezuela: Evidencias Sismológicas, Interciencia, 22, 131-137, 1997
Pérez O. J. , G. Lagos and C. Sanz, Microseismicity, Tectonics and Seismic Potential in Southern Caribbean and Northern Venezuela, Journal of Seismology, 1, 15-28, 1997
Pérez O. J., Seismological Report on The Mw=6.8 Strong Shock of 9 July, 1997 in Cariaco, Northeastern Venezuela, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 88, 874-879, 1998.
Pérez O. J. y J. Mendoza, Sismicidad en Venezuela y Areas Vecinas, Física de la Tierra, (Ed.Universidad Complutense, Madrid), 10, 87-110, 1998, España
Pérez, O. J., El Terremoto de Cariaco, Oriente de Venezuela, del 9 de Julio de 1997, Interciencia, 23, 101-110, 1998.
Oblique slip and slip partitioning along the Boconó fault system, western Venezuela, American Geophysical Union AGU, Fall meeting, San Francisco, USA, In: EOS, Spp. vol. 79, pp. S21A-09, 1998.
A new GPS program to quantify slip rates on faults conforming the southern boundary of the Caribbean plate in northern Venezuela, European Geophysical Society EGS, 24th General Assembly, The Hague, Neetherlands, In: Annales Geophysicae, 17, Spp. 1, 1999.
Relative motion between the Caribbean and South-American plates from GPS observations in northern South-America and the Lesser Antilles, European Geophysical Society EGS, 26th General Assembly, Nice, France, Annales Geophysicae, 19, Spp.1, 2001.
GPS geodesy in southern Caribbean and Venezuela: Results from from observations in 1994/2000 and ongoing experiments, American Geophysical Union AGU, Spring Meeting, Washington DC, USA, In: EOS, Spp. vol. 83, T31A-04, 2002, Invited Paper.
GPS geodesy in southern Caribbean: Results from observations in 1994/2000 and ongoing experiments for earthquake prediction, ERMERS Earthquake Mechanics, Earth Structure and Related Problems, Erice, Italy, In: Book of Abstracs, 2002, Invited Paper.
Pérez O. J., R. Bilham, R. Bendick, J. R. Velandia, N. Hernández, C. Moncayo, M. Hoyer and M. Kosuch, Velocity field across the Southern Caribbean plate boundary and estimates of Caribbean/South-American plate motion using GPS geodesy 1994-2000, Geophysical Research Letters, 28, 2987-2990, 2001
Pérez O. J., R. Bilham, R. Bendick, J. R. Velandia, J. Hernández, M. Hoyer, R. Velandia, C. Moncayo and M. Kosuch, Velocidad relativa entre las placas del Caribe y Suramérica a partir de observaciones GPS en el norte de Venezuela, Interciencia, 26, 69-74, 2001.
Weber, J. C, T. H. Dixon, Ch. DeMetz, W. B. Ambeh, P. Jansma, G. Mattioli, J. Saleh, G. Sella, R. Bilham and O. J. Perez, GPS estimate of relative motion between the Caribbean and South American plates, and geologic implications for Trinidad and Venezuela, Geology, 29, 75-78, 2001
Oblique convergence and slip partitioning along the Bocono fault system and Venezuelan Andes, IASPEI-International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth Interior, General Assembly, in: CD with Abstracts, Cape Town, South Africa, 2009
An overview of the earthquake activity and associated hazards in South-America and the Caribbean and the socio-economic impact of severe earthquakes in these regions, AGU American Geophysical Union Meeting of the Americas, Iguazu, Brasil, August 2010, Session U09, 2010, Invited Paper.
Feasibility of COCOnet GPS sites in Venezuela, UNAVCO meeting of 2012, Puerto Rico, Invited paper.
Pérez O. J., R. Bilham, M. Sequera, M. Molina, P. Gavotti, H. Codallo, C. Moncayo, C. Rodriguez, R. Velandia, M. Guzmán y P. Molnar, Campo de velocidades GPS en el occidente de Venezuela: Componente lateral derecha asociada a la falla de Boconó y componente convergente perpendicular a los Andes, Interciencia, 36 (1), 39-44, 2011
Wesnousky S. G., R. Aranguren, M. Rengifo, L. A. Owen, M. W. Caffee, M. K. Murari and O. J. Perez, Toward quantifying geomorphic rates of crustal displacement, landscape development, and the age of glaciation in the Venezuelan Andes, Geomorphology, 141-142, 99-113, 2012
On the motion of the Caribbean plate relative to South-America: New results from GPS geodesy 1999-2012, AGU American Geophysical Union Meeting of the Americas, Cancun, Mexico, 2013, Session U011, Invited Paper.
Pérez O. J., C. Rodríguez and J. L. Alonso, Earthquakes, tsunamis, and the related vulnerability in South-America and the Caribbean – an overview, in: Extreme Natural Hazards, Disaster Risks and Societal Implications, IUGG Special Publications, Cambridge University Press, U.K., 1, 145-151, Ed. A. Ismail-Zadeh, J. Urrutia Fucugauchi, A. Kijko, K. Takeuchi and I. Zaliapin, 2014.
On the interaction of the North Andes plate with the Caribbean and South American plates in northwestern South America from GPS geodesy and seismic data, Seismological Society of America meeting, Miami, Fl., 2018, Invited Paper (also Session Convener).
Pérez O. J., S.G. Wesnousky, R. De La Rosa, J. Márquez, R. Uzcategui, Ch. Quintero, L. Liberal, H. Mora-Paez and W. Szeliga, On the interaction of the North Andes plate with the Caribbean and South American plates in northwestern South America from GPS geodesy and seismic data, Geophysical Journal International, 214(3), 1986-1001, 2018, doi: 10.1093/gji/ggy230