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  2. Continental margin - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_margin

    These active margins can be convergent or transform margins, and are also places of high tectonic activity, including volcanoes and earthquakes. The West Coast of North America and South America are active margins. [4] Active continental margins are typically narrow from coast to shelf break, with steep descents into trenches. [4] Convergent ...

  3. Accretionary wedge - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accretionary_wedge

    Continental volcanic arc and cordilleran orogen; Adjacent continental masses located along strike (such as Barbados). Material transported into the trench by gravity sliding and debris flow from the forearc ridge (olistostrome) Piggy-back basins, which are small basins located in surface depression on the accretionary prism.

  4. Continental shelf - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_shelf

    Passive continental margins such as most of the Atlantic coasts have wide and shallow shelves, made of thick sedimentary wedges derived from long erosion of a neighboring continent. Active continental margins have narrow, relatively steep shelves, due to frequent earthquakes that move sediment to the deep sea. [19]

  5. Continental arc - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_arc

    A continental arc is a type of volcanic arc occurring as an "arc-shape" topographic high region along a continental margin.The continental arc is formed at an active continental margin where two tectonic plates meet, and where one plate has continental crust and the other oceanic crust along the line of plate convergence, and a subduction zone develops.

  6. Outline of plate tectonics - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_plate_tectonics

    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. Tectonic plates are composed of the oceanic lithosphere and the thicker continental lithosphere, each topped by its own kind of crust.

  7. Geology of the United States - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_United_States

    The Cascade Range is formed by an active continental margin. A slice of the Earth from the Pacific Ocean through the Pacific Northwest might look something like the adjacent image. Beneath the Cascades, a dense oceanic plate plunges beneath the North American plate; a process known as subduction. As the oceanic slab sinks deep into the Earth's ...

  8. Tectonic subsidence - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tectonic_subsidence

    Tectonic subsidence is the sinking of the Earth's crust on a large scale, relative to crustal-scale features or the geoid. [1] The movement of crustal plates and accommodation spaces produced by faulting [2] brought about subsidence on a large scale in a variety of environments, including passive margins, aulacogens, fore-arc basins, foreland basins, intercontinental basins and pull-apart basins.

  9. Turbidity current - Wikipedia

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbidity_current

    Turbidity currents can sometimes result from submarine seismic instability, which is common with steep underwater slopes, and especially with submarine trench slopes of convergent plate margins, continental slopes and submarine canyons of passive margins. With an increasing continental shelf slope, current velocity increases, as the velocity of ...