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Plate Tectonics
The crust forms the upper part of the lithosphere is broke into fragments (plates)
Two types of crust:
Divergent (means to spread apart move away) New land is created at these locaions.
Results in sealoor is spreading and causes oceanic ridges to form
o Example: Mid-Atlanic Ridge. The Atlanic Ocean is geing wider every year.
Convergent (moving toward each other)
o Oceanic and coninental crust
Subducion zones: when diferent plates hit each other, resuling in dense ocean
plate sinking and melted magma rising to form volcanoes.
Collision boundaries: when the same plates hit each other, resuling in rising
land such as mountains.
Transform (side by side movement) slide horizontally past each other. The zone along the
movement occurring is called transform fault. Most are located beneath oceans and some on
coninents. (igure 2.21)
o Example: San Andreas fault (California). The fault cuts right though San Francesco Bay.
Earthquakes occur at the boundaries (see map on slides) with a couple of excepions
Know the plate boundaries
Plate tectonics 250 million years ago, the coninents of today were clustered into the superconinent of
Pangaea. Evidence for this includes current mountain ranges.
Hot Spots
These areas are found away from plate boundaries. Magma rises up from the mantle. Magma erupts at
eh surface results in the form of volcanoes. Strings of islands are usually indicaive of a hot spot.
Understand that the hot spot never changes locaion. The only thing changing is the plate. It moves
across the hot spot. The only island in Hawaii that is onto of the hot spot is the big island, but Kauai used
to be millions of years ago. Islands eventually sink under water, but a new island will then form.
Accreted = stuck to the landscape