A variety of causes have been proposed for this, including slab roll-back due to density or ridge migration. Divergent Boundaries Divergent boundaries move by seafloor spreading. Boundaries of Tectonic Plates. Yellowstone, however, is on a continental plate.

All subduction zones have a forearc basin, which is an area between the arc and the trench.

This pattern is an excellent record of past ocean-floor movements and can be used to reconstruct past tectonics and determine rates of spreading at the ridges. Over time, the Earth’s magnetic field has flipped back and forth, and it is this change in the field causes the stripes.

Subducting slabs have also been named as a cause for hotspot volcanism. While subduction mountain ranges can cause this, collisions have many examples, with possibly the best modern example being the Persian Gulf, a feature only there due to the weight of the nearby Zagros Mountains. While this can be used on all faults, transform faults are most adapted for this technique.

Mantle plumes are inferred to be the legacy of this increased heat and may record the history of the start of rifting. Powerful earthquakes shake a wide area on both sides of the boundary.

This type of thrusting can typically occur in two styles: thin-skinned, which only faults surficial rocks, and thick-skinned, which thrusts deeper crustal rocks. It only moves a few centimeters each year and takes millions of years to cover a significant distance. A transform boundary sometimes called a strike-slip or a conservative boundary, is where the motion is of the plates sliding past each other. The crust and upper mantle part together constitute a layer called lithosphere. A mid-ocean ridge, also known as a spreading center, has many distinctive features. We use cookies for the improvement of user experience. This cycle has been operating for the last billion years with supercontinents Pangaea and Rodinia, and possibly billions of years before that.

Subduction is when the oceanic lithosphere descends into the mantle due to its density. This eruption threw into the atmosphere about 1000 cubic kilometers of magma erupted 631,000 years ago. The United States has two of the most extensive and best-studied examples: Hawai’i and Yellowstone. (2 Plate Tectonics – An Introduction to Geology, n.d.). Normal and reverse faulting and divergent and convergent boundaries tend to obscure, bury, or destroy these features; transform faults generally do not. Alternatively, does the height of the ridge pushing down, known as gravitational sliding. This movement occurs (at least partially) via the drag of motion within the asthenosphere and because of density. When the slab subducts at such a low angle, there is an interaction between the slab and the overlying continental plate. The thickness of the plate causes the generally much more violent and less frequent eruptions that have carved a curved path in the western United States for over 15 million years. Tension can create long mountain ranges.

Hawai’i is one of the most active hotspots on Earth.
The earthquakes can not only be significant, but they can be deep, outlining the subducting slab as it descends.


A chain of volcanoes often forms parallel to the boundary, to the mountain range, and to the trench. When continents congregate together, they hold more heat in which more vigorous convection can occur, which can start the rifting process. Also, because the faulting occurs beneath seawater, subduction can create giant tsunamis, such as the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and the 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake in Japan. Convergent boundaries, more than any other, are known for orogenesis, the process of building mountains and mountain chains.

A location where continental lithosphere transitions into the oceanic lithosphere without movement is known as a passive margin (e.g., the eastern coasts of North and South Ameri-ca). Secondly, since both plates are oceanic, volcanism creates volcanic islands instead of continental volcanic mountain ranges.

Please contact Adobe Support. Whereas, the surface water goes back to the bottom.

The classic idea is that hot spots do not move, though some evidence has been suggested that the hot spots do move as well.

The denser plate is subducted underneath the less dense plate. Convergent plate boundary created by two continental plates that slide towards each other. Alfred Wegener even hypothesized this concept of mid-ocean ridges. Therefore, tectonic plates may be made of both oceanic and continental lithosphere. The Yellowstone Hot Spot is formed from rising magma, much like Hawai’i.

The average thickness of tectonic plates in lithosphere is around 100 kilometers. Even if the motion stops, a minor basin can develop in this weak spot called an aulacogen, which can form long-lived basins well after tectonic processes stop. While it was known for some time that hot fluids could be found on the ocean floor, it was only in 1977 when a team of scientists using the Diving Support Vehicle Alvin discovered a thriving community of organisms, including tubeworms bigger than people. A hot spot is an area of rising magma, causing a series of volcanic centers that form volcanic islands in the ocean or craters/mountains on land. Some plate boundaries are poorly defined by topographic expression or lithospheric discontinuities. Thin-skinned deformation notably occurred in the western US during the Cretaceous Sevier Orogeny.

Oceanic-continental subduction occurs when an oceanic plate dives below a continental plate.

The evidence for this hot spot goes back at least 80 million years, and presumably, the hot spot was around before then, but rocks older than that in the Pacific Plate had already subducted.

These pieces of lithosphere are called tectonic plates and they move on their own direction. Another distinctive feature around mid-ocean ridges is magnetic striping. These transform faults produce frequent moderate to large earthquakes. Tectonic Plate Boundaries Hananeel morinville. A location where continental lithosphere transitions into the oceanic lithosphere without movement is known as a passive margin (e.g., the eastern coasts of North and South Ameri-ca).

In places where transform faults are not straight, they can create secondary faulting.

The reason behind their floatation lies in the composition of rocks.

One famous example is the Mississippi Valley Embayment, which forms a depression through which the upper end of the Mississippi River flows. These features are bounded by normal faults and include tall shoulders called horsts, and deep basins called grabens. At the current time, there is oceanic lithosphere that is denser than the underlying asthenosphere on either side of the Atlantic Ocean that is not currently subducting.

The Dead Sea and California’s Salton Sea are examples of basins formed by transtensional forces.