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A hotspot's position on the Earth's surface is independent of tectonic plate boundaries, and so hotspots may create a chain of volcanoes as the plates move above them. There are two hypotheses that attempt to explain their origins. One suggests that hotspots are due to mantle plumes that rise as thermal diapirs from the core–mantle boundary. [2]
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 ...
Tectonic plates generally focus deformation and volcanism at plate boundaries.However, the Hawaii hotspot is more than 3,200 kilometers (1,988 mi) from the nearest plate boundary; [1] while studying it in 1963, Canadian geophysicist J. Tuzo Wilson proposed the hotspot theory to explain these zones of volcanism so far from regular conditions, [3] a theory that has since come into wide acceptance.
Plate tectonics (from Latin tectonicus, from Ancient Greek τεκτονικός (tektonikós) 'pertaining to building') [1] is the scientific theory that the Earth's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago.
The southwest section of the Ring of Fire is more complex, with a number of smaller tectonic plates in collision with the Pacific plate at the Mariana Islands, the Philippines, eastern Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Tonga, and New Zealand; this part of the Ring excludes Australia, because that landmass lies in the center of its tectonic plate far ...
A "hotspot," Chadwick explains, is a point source of extra magma supply in one place. "We don't know why they form, but they're scattered around the world," he said. "So, Axial's on the spreading ...
An example of a hotspot volcanic belt is the Anahim Volcanic Belt in British Columbia, Canada, which was formed as a result of the North American Plate sliding westward over the Anahim hotspot. [9] Most hotspot volcanoes are basaltic because they erupt through oceanic lithosphere (e.g., Hawaii, Tahiti). As a result, they are less explosive than ...
Where hotspots are developed beneath the continents the products are different, as the mantle-derived magmas cause melting of the continental crust, forming granitic magmas that reach the surface as rhyolites. The Yellowstone hotspot is an example of continental hotspot magmatism, which also displays time-progressive shifts in magmatic activity.