Visit the Interactive Plate Boundary Map to explore satellite images of convergent boundaries between oceanic and continental plates. Two locations are marked to show this type of plate boundary - the Cascade volcanoes along the Washington-Oregon coast of North America and the Andes mountain range on...
The interior of the North American plate contains a giant granitic craton. It’s believed that the North American (Laurentian) craton is 4 billion years old. The total size of this plate is 75,900,000 km2making it the second largest of the7 major tectonic boundarieson Earth. Pick your maj...
Some plate boundaries are poorly defined by topographic expression or lithospheric discontinuities. These types of boundaries must be plotted on a map showing their approximate locations. The southern edge of the Caribbean Plate, passing through northern South America, is an example. Another is the b...
The East Pacific Rise and its associated features to the north and southwest form the eastern and southern boundaries of the Pacific Plate, where it abuts (from north to south) the North American, Cocos, Nazca, and Antarctic plates. The crest of the East Pacific Rise is a centre of seafloo...
A single curve on the map of a plate-boundary area is sufficient to identify where a discrete plate boundary intersects the ground surface, also known as the ground-surface trace of the boundary. In contrast to discrete boundaries, distributed boundaries are broad zones across which the motion ...
AN INTERACTIVE MAP OF PLATE BOUNDARIES FOR GEOSCIENCE TEACHERSGROSS, Amy L
Tectonic Plate Boundaries Plate boundaries are the edges where two plates meet. Most geologic activities, including volcanoes, earthquakes, and mountain building, take place at plate boundaries. How can two plates move relative to each other? Divergent plate boundaries: the two plates move away from...
Earth’s tectonic plate boundaries are unusual because they can consist ofcontinent and ocean crust. Here are the 7 major tectonic plates of the world in a bit more detail. 1. Pacific Plate The Pacific major plate is the largest which underlies the Pacific Ocean. Specifically, it stretches al...
plate boundaries, and can thus ‘transform’ one type of tectonic boundary (e.g., extensional) to another (e.g., compressional), hence the name. Many transform faults offset mid-ocean ridges, producing (in map view) a staircase pattern of alternating ridge and transform boundaries (Figure 2...
The coexistence of divergent (spreading ridge) and convergent (subduction zone) plate boundaries at which lithosphere is respectively generated and destroyed is the hallmark of plate tectonics. Here, we document temporally- and spatially-associated Neoar