What is on the North American Plate?
North American, we inhabit what is appropriately named the North American Plate, the tectonic boundary that covers most of North America, Greenland, Cuba, Bahamas, and parts of Siberia and Iceland. It extends eastward to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and westward to the Chersky Range in eastern Siberia.
Why is the North American Plate important?
Along its leading edge, the North American plate overrides subducting oceanic plates (Juan de Fuca, Cocos), which fuel arc volcanism along the Cascade and Central American margins.
How was the North American Plate formed?
To the east, the North American plate shares the Mid-Atlantic Ridge with the Eurasian plate. This divergent margin, offset throughout by transform faults, began spreading approximately 180 Ma ago, opening the North Atlantic Ocean (Kearey, 2009).
What trench is the convergent boundary for North America?
Aleutian Trench
The Aleutian Trench (or Aleutian Trough) is an oceanic trench along a convergent plate boundary which runs along the southern coastline of Alaska and the Aleutian islands.
What plate is the North American plate bumping into?
The North American Plate has a transform boundary with the Pacific Plate, dividing California at the San Andreas Fault.
Why is the North American plate moving west?
The Pacific Plate is being moved north west due to sea floor spreading from the East Pacific Rise (divergent margin) in the Gulf of California. The North American Plate is being pushed west and north west due to sea floor spreading from the Mid Atlantic Ridge (divergent margin).
Is the North American Plate divergent?
The North American Plate has a transform boundary with the Pacific Plate, dividing California at the San Andreas Fault. The two plates move apart from each other at this divergent boundary. As they pull apart, the mantle material beneath rises to create new crust on the ocean floor.
What caused the North American Plate to move?
What is the name of the theory describing the movement of Earth’s plates?
The theory of plate tectonics revolutionized the earth sciences by explaining how the movement of geologic plates causes mountain building, volcanoes, and earthquakes.
What are the important concepts about convergent plate boundary?
At convergent plate boundaries, oceanic crust is often forced down into the mantle where it begins to melt. Magma rises into and through the other plate, solidifying into granite, the rock that makes up the continents. Thus, at convergent boundaries, continental crust is created and oceanic crust is destroyed.
Is the North American plate moving?
The North American plate is moving to the west-southwest at about 2.3 cm (~1 inch) per year driven by the spreading center that created the Atlantic Ocean, the Mid Atlantic Ridge.
What caused the North American plate to move?
Where is the Pacific Plate and the Aleutian Trench located?
The Aleutian Trench is formed where the Pacific plate subducts beneath the North American plate in the Arcticregion between the U.S. state of Alaska and the Russian region of Siberia. The Aleutian Islands form a volcanic arc that swings out from the Alaskan Peninsulaand just north of the Aleutian Trench.
What is the geology of the North American Plate?
noun Geology. a major tectonic division of the earth’s crust, comprising Greenland and the continent of North America and the suboceanic Labrador and North American Basins, and bounded on the east by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, on the south by the Caribbean and South American Plates, and on the west by the San Andreas fault and Aleutian Trench.
Where are some of the most famous ocean trenches?
Some of the most familiar ocean trenches are the result of this type of convergent plate boundary. The Peru-Chile Trench off the west coast of South America is formed by the oceanic crust of the Nazca plate subducting beneath the continental crust of the South American plate. The Ryukyu Trench, stretching out from southern Japan,
Where do ocean trenches occur in a plate boundary?
In particular, ocean trenches are a feature of convergent plate boundaries, where two or more tectonic plates meet. At many convergent plate boundaries, dense lithosphere melts or slides beneath less-dense lithosphere in a process called subduction, creating a trench.