Credit: Photo courtesy of Robert J. Lillie. The rocks on top of the plate are metamorphosed due to the great temperatures and pressures at those depths. Two parallel mountain ranges have been forming as a result of the Juan de Fuca Plate subducting beneath the edge of North America. After a terrifying free-fall that lasted 8 minutes, the pilots finally managed to restart the engines at only 6,000 feet (2,000 meters). Rainier National Park. Katmai volcano did collapse, but unlike Mt. With continued uplift and erosion, most of the volcanic material would erode. As described above in the context of Benioff zones (Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\)), earthquakes take place close to the boundary between the subducting crust and the overriding crust. The major plates are Eurasia, Pacific, India, Australia, North America, South America, Africa, and Antarctic. USGS photo. As the Juan de Fuca Plate (lower cookie) subducts beneath the North American Plate (upper cookie), the layers are scraped off the ocean floor and pile up as the Coast Range. . South America plate, Antarctic plate, Eurasia plate, North America plate, Arabia plate, India plate, Australia plate. Error message | View complete answer on https://www.britannica.com Are the Nazca Plate and South American plates divergent plates? Mazama, violently erupted 7,700 years ago. From 1999 to 2008, the United States Mint issued 25-cent coins representing each of the 50 states. Which is true? USGS photo. Transform faults are not limited to oceanic crust and spreading centers; many of them are on continental margins. It runs along the west coast of Mexico and western Caribbean countries. This plate is small. The Cocos Plate is a small, oceanic plate just to the west of Central America. Some transform faults connect continental parts of plates. An example is the San Andreas Fault, which extends from the southern end of the Juan de Fuca Ridge to the northern end of the East Pacific Rise (ridge) in the Gulf of California (Figures 10.28 and 10.29). The spectacular pillow lavas seen on the road up Hurricane Ridge indicate that lava formed on the sea floor and was later uplifted. Visitors can witness mountains as they are forming, and sometimes experience the accompanying earthquake and volcanic activity. The inset shows these plates to be the Cocos plate and the North American plate. Layers of sandstone and shale deposited on the top of the Pacific Plate were later metamorphosed to quartzite and slate as the plate subducted beneath southern Alaska, and then shoved upward as part of the accretionary wedge. As originally described by Wegener in 1915, the present continents were once all part of a supercontinent, which he termed Pangea (meaning all land). Answers for geologist, scientists, spacecraft operators. Sandstone and shale layers at Kenai Fjords are commonly metamorphosed and were so deformed during subduction and uplift that they are vertical in places. Trees along the Washington coast were killed by salt-water invasion when the land suddenly dropped during the last great Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake in the year 1700. Most divergent boundaries are located at the oceanic ridges (although some are on land), and the crustal material created at a spreading boundary is always oceanic in character; in other words, it is mafic igneous rock (e.g., basalt or gabbro, rich in ferromagnesian minerals). If spreading along the mid-Atlantic ridge continues to be slower than spreading within the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean will start to close up, and eventually (in a 100 million years or more) North and South America will collide with Europe and Africa. The resulting magma ascends through the crust, producing a mountain chain with many volcanoes. Cocos Island rides on it.. At present, North and South America, Europe, and Africa are moving with their respective portions of the Atlantic Ocean. Pangea, which existed from about 350 to 200 Ma, was not the first supercontinent. Dont worry if you cant name them all. Unclick all the other layers you've been using, and then click next to . Finally, using a highlighter or colored pencil, label as many of the boundaries as you can as divergent, convergent, or transform. Transform boundaries are places where plates slide sideways past each other. Feature labels. CC BY. The eruption of Aniakchak Volcano about 3,500 years ago rivals the eruption and collapse of Mt. Farther east the Juan de Fuca Plate descends deeper and deeper. Feature labels. The resulting magmas can therefore have a variety of compositions, ranging from the original (low-silica) basalt, to (intermediate-silica) andesite, all the way up to (high-silica) rhyolite. Their high-silica magmas produce not only andesite and rhyolite lava flows, but also lots of other volcanic materials such as ash and pumice. This subduction forms the volcanoes of Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, also known as the Central America Volcanic Arc. Plate Boundaries Divergent UU) Transform North American Plate Convergent Other Plate Motion Caribbean Plate Indias Plate motion vectors rotated based on the direction of plate movement Cocos Plate Pacific Plate South American Plate Google Earth Z age Landsat / Copernicus ata SIO, NOAA . There is commonly an ocean trench along the boundary. The Cocos plate was created about 23 million years ago when a larger plate broke into two pieces. Volcanoes in national parks in the Cascades have eruptive personalities that reflect the complex magma systems associated with subduction zones. Mazama, Aniakchak no longer holds a large lake because the caldera wall is breached. Ranger Jens Oreo Demo Basalt lava is thin and runny and will flow for miles and miles. Without referring to the plate map in Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\), or any other resources, write in the names of as many of the plates as you can. Cocos and Rivera Plates Maximilian Goetz. Spreading rates vary considerably, from 2 cm/y to 6 cm/y in the Atlantic, to between 12 cm/y and 20 cm/y in the Pacific. The line of active volcanoes, from Mt. Farther inland, the subducting plate reaches depths where it sweats hot water. Usually, one of the converging plates will move beneath the other, a process known as subduction. and Alberta are also a result of continent-continent collisions. There is tremendous deformation of the pre-existing continental rocks, and creation of mountains from that rock, from any sediments that had accumulated along the shores (i.e., within geosynclines) of both continental masses, and commonly also from some ocean crust and upper mantle material. Nazca plate, Pacific plate, North America plate, Caribbean plate. This contortion attests to the great forces that squeezed and lifted the layers from the sea. An ancient volcano, Mt. The subduction of the Nazca plate under southern Chile has a history of producing massive earthquakes, including the largest ever recorded on earth, the moment magnitude 9.5 1960 Valdivia earthquake. The best example is the San Andreas Fault on the Pacific coast of the United States. Roughly 3.2 million square kilometres (1.2 million square miles) in area, the Caribbean Plate borders the North American Plate, the South American Plate, the Nazca Plate and the Cocos Plate. The park is right above the focus of the Great Alaska Earthquake of 1964, one of the two largest ever recorded (the other, in 1961, occurred along the subduction zone off western South America). An accretionary wedge forms between the converging plates as material is scraped off the subducting plate. National Park Service Sites in the Southern Alaska Subduction Zone reveal a variety of active volcanic features above the zone where the top of the Pacific Plate reaches sufficient depth where temperature and pressure are high enough to dehydrate rocks and form magma. This map shows the boundaries between the major plates. Point Reyes National Seashore and Golden Gate National Recreation Area are the only two NPS sites that are right on the San Andreas Fault. USGS photo. It is named after Cocos Island, the only emergent island on the plate. National Park Service sites are shown in red. The Cocos plate is found on the west side of Mexico. Vents and fractures (also called fissures ) in these mid-ocean ridges allow magma and gases to escape into the ocean. Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve is on the Alaska Peninsula. Kenai Fjords National Park National Park Service sites in the Cascades reveal colorful landscapes that result from a varity of volcanic processes. Olympic National Park, Washington The boundary between the Pacific and North American plates in California is a transform plate boundary marked by the San Andreas strike-slip fault. 100% (1 rating) SOLUTION: * The plate boundaries moving towards each other are called the convergent plate boundaries. Rainier were to suddenly and violently eruptso much that its magma chamber empties and the volcanic peak collapses in on itself. This situation may not continue for too much longer, however. It formed millions of years ago when the Farallon Plate split into the Cocos Plate and the Nazca Plate.. The caldera has partially filled with water an approximately half-scale version of the better-known Crater Lake in Oregon. The Philippine Plate, also known as the Philippine Sea Plate, is a small tectonic plate between the Eurasian Plate and the Pacific Plate. Many National Park Service sites are found in active and ancient subduction zones. North America plate, Africa plate, Australia plate, Arabia plate, India plate, Filipino plate. As fluid basalt lava flows into the ocean it forms a pile of globular structures known as pillows. Modified from Beauty from the Beast: Plate Tectonics and the Landscapes of the Pacific Northwest, by Robert J. Lillie, Wells Creek Publishers, 92 pp., 2015, www.amazon.com/dp/1512211893. Photo courtesy of Robert J. Lillie. Photo courtesy of Robert J. Lillie. Detailed Description Map of the North American - Caribbean tectonic plate boundary. What type of boundary is the San Andreas Fault? Imagine if Mt. The Caribbean Plate is a mostly oceanic tectonic plate underlying Central America and the Caribbean Sea off the northern coast of South America . Mazama 7,700 years before, the material expelled from its magma chamber did not spew forth out of the top of the volcano. And, as at Mt. Redwood National and State Parks, California If the seafloor rises or falls, giant sea waves (a tsunami) can form. Kenai Fjords National Park Mazama, erupted and collapsed 7,700 years ago, forming the large cavity (caldera) that now holds Crater Lake. Hood in Oregon, Mt. This plate is moving directly east towards the South America plate. Off the Pacific coast, the Cocos plate is subducted beneath both the North American and Caribbean plates, which are separated by a sinistral transcurrent boundary. Examples of continent-continent convergent boundaries are the collision of the India Plate with the Eurasian Plate, creating the Himalaya Mountains, and the collision of the African Plate with the Eurasian Plate, creating the series of ranges extending from the Alps in Europe to the Zagros Mountains in Iran. Start with the major plates, and then work on the smaller ones. Off the Pacific coast, the Cocos plate is subducted beneath both the North American and Caribbean plates, which are separated by a sinistral transcurrent boundary. The eruption of Mt. This plate is bound by the North-American and Caribbean Plates to the north-east, the small Rivera Plate to the north-west, the Pacific Plate to the west, The magma, which is lighter than the surrounding mantle material, rises through the mantle and the overlying oceanic crust to the ocean floor where it creates a chain of volcanic islands known as an island arc. On Dec. 15, 1989 a jet with 244 passengers and crew was en route from Amsterdam to Anchorage. Illustrations above modified from Beauty from the Beast: Plate Tectonics and the Landscapes of the Pacific Northwest, by Robert J. Lillie, Wells Creek Publishers, 92 pp., 2015, www.amazon.com/dp/1512211893. Crater Lake in Crater Lake National Park partially fills the large depression formed when a composite volcano erupted and collapsed in on itself 7,700 years ago. Wrangell (left) and Mt. Mount Rainier is a 14,000 foot (4,300 meter) volcano in the Cascade Range developed above the place where the subducting Juan de Fuca Plate reaches sufficient depth to release hot fluids into the overriding North American Plate. Question: Tectonic Plates Use this map to answer the following questions. The Rocky Mountains in B.C. The North American Plate . The Cocos Plate is subducting beneath the Caribbean Plate, while the Caribbean Plate is subducting below both the Panama Plate and the North Andean Plate. Redoubt, on the eastern side of the park, had four explosive eruptions that resulted in large volumes of ash and mudflows. This plate includes all of Africa and the surrounding ocean, including the eastern Atlantic Ocean, the surrounding Antarctic Ocean, and the western Indian ocean. This plate is moving northwest towards the Australia, Filipino, and Eurasia plates.