Yucatan Peninsula

Oil Spills. Oil spills occur from oil pipeline leaks, oil tanker accidents, or submarine oil drilling operations. The two major ocean drilling accidents—oil wells blowing out—were the 1969 Santa Barbara Channel spill and the 1979 Yucatan Peninsula spill, in Mexico. The Yucatan spill spewed out more than three million barrels before being capped in 1980. Both caused damage to beaches and marine life, but the smaller Santa Barbara spill was far more devastating because of unfavorable winds following the accident. 

Cretaceous 138 Myr Gondwana begins to break up. Continued radiation of flowering plants mammals begin diversifying. Meteorite strikes Yucatan Peninsula at end of period causing mass extinction (ca. 75% of all species disappear)... 

The workshop was co-chaired by Dr. Luis Marin, Professor of Geology at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM— National Autonomous University of Mexico) and Dr. Henry Vaux, Professor of Resource Economics and Associate Vice President Emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley. The workshop addressed science-based decision making in a regional (Yucatan peninsula) and topical (sustainable ground water management) context. 

Schultz IG, Shepard AO, Blackmon PD, Starkey HC (1971) Mixed layer kaoUnite-montmoriUon-ite from the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico Clays Clay Miner 19 137-150 Shternina EB (1960) Solubility of gypsum in aqueous solutions of salts. Intern Geol Rev 1 pp 605-616... 

Results of outdoor and indoor corrosion rate and corrosion aggressivity in tropical corrosion test stations of Cuba and Mexico are reported. The results mainly concern to natural atmospheric corrosion tests obtained in the western side of the Isle of Cuba and in the Campeche State located at the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. The two regions are located in the tropical climate and receive the influences of the waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mexican Gulf. Data processed in this paper correspond to atmospheric corrosion tests carried out during a long period of time, about the last 20 years in Cuba and the last 10 years at Campeche up to the present. 

The humid tropical climate of Cuba and the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico) is characterized by an average air temperature always higher than 15°C, frequently high relative humidity, a summer or wet season (may to October) with frequent and heavy precipitations and a winter of dry season (november to april) with lower precipitations. 

In the case of these two regions there is a natural source of airborne salinity the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. Airborne salinity plays an important role in determining corrosion aggressivity in Cuba [1-4] and in the Yucatan Peninsula [2, 5-6], Other anthropogenic contaminants can be present also in this region, particularly sulfur compounds coming from the oil production and manufacture industries and... 

Air temperature in the Yucatan Peninsula reaches higher values than in Cuba, the top average air temperature in Cuba is 26°C in the eastern shoreline [7], In the Yucatan Peninsula part of the territoiy can be classified as Tropical very warm with an average temperature over 26°C [8], Absolute maximum temperature in Cuba is of 38,6°C, meanwhile a temperature over 40°C is frequently reported in sites of the Yucatan Peninsula, particularly in Campeche. 

About % of the Cuban territoiy is composed by mountains and the rest is mainly terrain flatness. The Yucatan Peninsula has no mountains. The lower temperatures and higher precipitations rates in Cuba are localized in the mountain regions. Orography is a transformation factor of local wind regime. 

Figure 10. Annual average of deposition rate of Chlorides for different sites of the Yucatan Peninsula Puerto Progreso and Puerto Morelos (Yucatan and Quintana Roo States), Campeche and Veracruz States.

Borges-Argaez, R., Pena-Rodriguez, K.M., and Waterman, P.G., Flavonoids from two Lonchocarpus species of the Yucatan peninsula. Phytochemistry, 60, 533, 2002. 

Scholes, F. V. Roys, R. L. The Maya Chontal Indians of Acalan-Tixchel A Contribution to the History and Ethnography of the Yucatan Peninsula University of Oklahoma Press Norman, OK, 1968. 

II. 10, H20 = 12.88, total = 100.91) they concluded the clay was 80% montmoril-lonite and 20% kaolinite. Although considerable montmorillonite is weathered to kaolinite, this type of interstratification is relatively rare. Schultz et al. (1969) found samples from the Yucatan Peninsula that contained 40-60% kaolinite interlayered with montmorillonite ... 

Schultz, L.G., Shepard, A.O., Blackmon, P.D. and Starkey, H.C., 1969. Mixed-layer kaolinite-montmorillonite from the Yucatan Peninsula. Clay Miner. Soc. Abstr., 18th Conf, p. 33. 

Stoessell R.K., Ward W.C., Ford B.H. and Schuffert J.D. (1989) Water chemistry and CaC03 dissolution in the saline part of the open-flow mixing zone, coastal Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Geol. Soc. Amer. Bull. 101, 159-169. 

If photosynthesis were to cease, all higher forms of life would be extinct in about 25 years. A milder version of such a catastrophe ended the Cretaceous period 65.1 million years ago when a large asteroid struck the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. Enough dust was sent into the atmosphere that photosynthetic capacity was greatly diminished, which apparently led to the disappearance of the dinosaurs and allowed the mammals to rise to prominence. 

The last globally catastrophic collision between Earth and an asteroid probably took place 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period. It now seems reasonably likely that the extinction of many species, including the great dinosaur extinction which occurred at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, was caused by the impact of an asteroid approximately 6.2 mi (10 km) in diameter. The submerged remnants of the giant impact crater produced in this terminal Cretaceous collision were recently discovered on the coast of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. The crater, Chixulub (pronounced CHIKS-a-lub), is approximately 112 mi (180 km) in diameter and has long been buried under coastal sediments. 

Ward, W.C. (1975) Petrology and diagenesis of carbonate eolianites of north eastern Yucatan Peninsula. American Association of Petroleum Geologists Studies in Geology 2, 500-571. 

J.R.Drumm and Prain, family Agavticeae (Fig. 14). The plant is a succulent with long, fleshy, water-storing leaves, which have long tenacious fibres, from which sacks, ropes and other things are manufactured. Sisal is cultivated in Tanzania, Kenya and on the Yucatan peninsula. 

Ward, W.C. Halley, R.B. (1985) Dolomitization in a mixing zone of near-seawater composition. Late Pleistocene, Northeastern Yucatan Peninsula. J. sediment. Petrol., 55, 407-420. 

Freile-Pelegrin, Y. and Murano, E. 2005. Agars from three species of GracUaria (Rhodophyta) from Yucatan Peninsula. Bioresour. Techno . 96, 295-302. 

Given the importance of water for life, it should come as no surprise that development of civilizations has been closely tied to reliable sources of fresh water. During the first millennium, Mayan civilization was one of the most advanced on Earth. Mayan city-states covered much of the Yucatan peninsula in what is now easternmost Mexico. 

The end of the Permian Period is defined by the extinction of about 90% of all life forms that existed on the Earth at that time. This catastrophe was even more severe than the extinction event that defines the end of the Cretaceous Period which resulted from the profound environmental disturbance caused by the impact of an asteroid at Chicxulub on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. The cause of the Permo-Triassic extinction could have been a dramatic fluctuation of the global climate, or of sealevel, or the impact of an asteroid or comet, or severe volcanic activity, or all of the above. 

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