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Where the plates meet, their relative motion determines the type of plate boundary (or fault): convergent, divergent, or transform. The relative movement of the plates typically ranges from zero to 10 cm annually. [5] Faults tend to be geologically active, experiencing earthquakes, volcanic activity, mountain-building, and oceanic trench formation.
Slab pull is a geophysical mechanism whereby the cooling and subsequent densifying of a subducting tectonic plate produces a downward force along the rest of the plate. In 1975 Forsyth and Uyeda used the inverse theory method to show that, of the many forces likely to be driving plate motion, slab pull was the strongest. [1]
The North American plate is a tectonic plate containing most of North America, Cuba, the Bahamas, extreme northeastern Asia, and parts of Iceland and the Azores.With an area of 76 million km 2 (29 million sq mi), it is the Earth's second largest tectonic plate, behind the Pacific plate (which borders the plate to the west).
Where the plates meet, their relative motion determines the type of plate boundary (or fault): convergent, divergent, or transform. The relative movement of the plates typically ranges from zero to 10 cm annually. Faults tend to be geologically active, experiencing earthquakes, volcanic activity, mountain-building, and oceanic trench formation.
The Australian plate then to the south starts subducting under the Pacific plate at a rate of 3.6 cm/year (1.4 in/year) at the Puysegur Trench, [6] which ends in the south as a long series of transform faults between the two plates called the Macquarie Ridge Complex, commencing with the McDougall Fault Zone and ending with the Macquarie Fault ...
Crustal thickening has an upward component of motion and often occurs when continental crust is thrust onto continental crust. Basically nappes (thrust sheets) from each plate collide and begin to stack one on top of the other; evidence of this process can be seen in preserved ophiolitic nappes (preserved in the Himalayas) and in rocks with an inverted metamorphic gradient.
Extensional tectonics is associated with the stretching and thinning of the crust or the lithosphere.This type of tectonics is found at divergent plate boundaries, in continental rifts, during and after a period of continental collision caused by the lateral spreading of the thickened crust formed, at releasing bends in strike-slip faults, in back-arc basins, and on the continental end of ...
Strike-slip tectonics or wrench tectonics is a type of tectonics that is dominated by lateral (horizontal) movements within the Earth's crust (and lithosphere).Where a zone of strike-slip tectonics forms the boundary between two tectonic plates, this is known as a transform or conservative plate boundary.