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Plate Tectonics Boundaries!
How did plate tectonics come to be? How do plate tectonics impact our earth and humans? Continental drift played a huge role in moving toward plate tectonics which was first discovered by Alfred Wegner. Discussing in evidence, understanding how the plates operate and how they move while the lithosphere is being created and or destroyed from time to time. Identifying boundaries and the direction of motion in that plates move. Also, let evidence explain how transform faults exist and describe the geology of supercontinents forming and breaking away. Lastly, discussing the mechanisms of plate motions. Plate Tectonics is the root of many geological changes but the process of understanding them is key to understanding the geology of how lands are formed or even becoming smaller or breaking apart.
Earths interior
Earths interior
A few things to know about our earth's interior before we start getting into our Boundaries. The description above is labeled very well but the middle where the mantle is can also be called the mesosphere.
Divergent
Divergent
Plates are splitting. Magma is coming up through the ground and starts weakening and thinning and so it spreads the continental crust apart. A perfect example of this boundary is the East African rift.
Transform
Transform
When the plates are pushing on top of each other. An example of this would be the San Andreas Fault. An explanation of how it works, the North American Plate and the Pacific Plate are pushing together as North American Plate is on top and the Pacific Plate is on the bottom.
Convergent
Convergent
Plates are converging and pushing as the lithosphere in the diagram slips under, going down from the left side and crashing into it from the right side. Related to this is also called Subduction which is oceanic-oceanic, and this boundary is more linear moving away from fault line, example of this is the North American and Jaun de Fuca Plate. The boundary related to this topic would be Collision which is continent-continent and an example of this would be the Himalaya Mountains.
Hot Spots
Hot Spots
A Hot Spot is on top of a plate. Hawaii is known for their hot spot. Hot spots form volcanoes and they keep forming because of the plate movement, whichever way the plate movement is going also determines how old the volcanoes are. If the volcano is farthest from the hot spot that means that's the oldest one and the closest one or the one forming on top is the youngest one. A reminder Hot Spots are NOT Boundaries!
(Sources: Lecture Notes & Textbook)
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