Katmai National Park and Preserve lies where the worlds largest volcanic event of the 20th Century occurred. This plate makes up most of the Pacific Ocean. In her version of the Oreo cookie demonstration, the creamy filling is the layers of sediment and basalt on the ocean floor. 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. As they were caught in the vise between the converging Juan de Fuca and North American plates, some of the layers were so contorted that they are now in vertical orientations along the coast. Photo courtesy of Robert J. Lillie. Olympic National Park, Washington We also acknowledge previous National Science Foundation support under grant numbers 1246120, 1525057, and 1413739. The forearc basin is the Willamette Valley in Oregon and Puget Sound in Washington. Before we talk about processes at plate boundaries, its important to point out that there are never gaps between plates. Africa plate, Nazca plate, Scotia plate, Caribbean plate, Antarctic plate, North America plate. As the basalt magma rises up through the thick continental crust of North America, it melts some of that rock, too. It is suggested that this type of valley eventually develops into a linear sea (such as the present-day Red Sea), and finally into an ocean (such as the Atlantic). The other piece became the Nazca plate.The Cocos plate also broke into two pieces, creating the small Rivera plate. This plate is moving north east towards the Arabia and Eurasia plates. The western boundary is another mid-ocean ridge, the East Pacific Rise. Geology This subduction-subduction-transform (SST) triple junction is referred to hereafter as the NACC triple junction. This plate is moving north east towards the Eurasia plate. Near their boundary, the plates can lock together for centuries, then suddenly let go as a giant earthquake. Looking first at Washington, one sees Mt. North America plate, Australia plate, Antarctic plate, Nazca plate, Filipino plate, Cocos plate, Juan de Fuca plate. The North American Plate is one of the slowest, averaging around 1 cm/y in the south up to almost 4 cm/y in the north. Some of the processes taking place in this setting include: Spreading is hypothesized to start within a continental area with up-warping or doming related to an underlying mantle plume or series of mantle plumes. North America plate, Africa plate, Australia plate, Arabia plate, India plate, Filipino plate. St. Helens, a lava dome later grew within the breached crater near the mountains summit. 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. And at times, lower-silica components of their magma chambers erupt, producing basalt lava flows as well as cinders and volcanic bombs. Find the boundary between the North American and Cocos plates. 40 Million Years Ago Hydrothermal features on the flanks of Lassen Peak include numerous hot springs, mudpots and fumaroles that suggest there is still hot magma beneath the mountain. That may not seem like much, but when tens of thousands of earthquakes occur over a few million years, coastal ranges form. Point Reyes National Seashore and Golden Gate National Recreation Area are the only two NPS sites that are right on the San Andreas Fault. Transform boundaries exist where one plate slides past another without production or destruction of crustal material. Visits to coastal NPS sites in the Pacific Northwest can help us appreciate the landscapes that develop over time because of these large quakes, and learn how we are preparing our homes, communities, and infrastructure for the next Big One.. Massive areas of granite from the cooled magma chambers that fed the volcanoes form portions of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, including Yosemite National Park. Photo courtesy of Robert J. Lillie. Cocos Plate; Type: Minor: Approximate area: 2,900,000 km 2: Movement 1: north-east: Speed 1: 67 mm/year: . There is commonly an ocean trench along the boundary. 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). It is subducting under (that is, being forced under) the South American plate. Today It is likely that as many as 20 mantle plumes, many of which still exist, were responsible for the initiation of the rifting of Pangea along what is now the mid-Atlantic ridge (see Figure \(\PageIndex{10}\)). Likewise, individual volcanic eruptions may add only a thin layer to the surface. The devastating 1985 Mexico City earthquake and the 2017 Chiapas earthquake were results of the subduction of the Cocos Plate beneath the North American Plate. A forearc basin develops in the low area between the two mountain ranges. Eurasia plate, Pacific plate, Africa plate, Caribbean plate, South America plate, Cocos plate, Juan de Fuca plate. The Sierra Nevada are the eroded remnants of the volcanic arc developed when the Farallon Plate subducted beneath the continent. By 50 Ma, Australia had separated from Antarctic, and shortly after that, India collided with Asia. It is subducting under (that is, being forced under) the South American plate. This is what has happened in the Sierra Nevada of central and southern California, as represented by the granite-type rocks of Half Dome within Yosemite National Park shown on the California state quarter. This map shows the boundaries between the major plates. Near the western edge of the continent, the Juan de Fuca Plate plunges downward and some of the layers of hard crust and ocean sediments are scraped off the top and squeezed upward as the Olympic Mountains and other coastal ranges. This plate moves north and slightly west towards the Caribbean plate and the North America plate. The Coast Ranges, including the Olympic Mountains, are made of oceanic sediments and hard rocks that were caught in the vise between the converging plates, uplifted, and added to the edge of the continent. The part of the plate around the South America plate is moving northwards and a little east. Rainier National Park. This plate is small. CC BY. New Guinea and the northern parts of New Zealand are part of the Australia plate. This is the zone where the two plates have been locked together since the last great earthquake occurred in the year 1700. The southern boundary is a mid-oceanic ridge, the Galapagos Rise. View the full answer. Effects of the 1964 earthquake are quite spectacular in the park; the coastline dropped so much that in places it lies submerged beneath about 8 feet (2.5meters) of water. Mount Rainier. Find the boundary between the North American and Cocos plates. The line of active volcanoes, from Mt. Most of this water is present within the sheet silicate mineral serpentine which is derived from alteration of pyroxene and olivine near the spreading ridge shortly after the rocks formation. Transform faults are not limited to oceanic crust and spreading centers; many of them are on continental margins. Stack the quarters with Washington on top, Oregon in the middle and California on the bottom. 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. The Cascadia Subduction Zone has two parallel mountain ranges separated by a low region near sea level. Half Dome in Yosemite National Park is made of granite that solidified from magma tens of millions of years ago, when a subduction zone extended along the entire west coast. The east coast of North America is a passive margin and not a plate boundary. As originally described by Wegener in 1915, the present continents were once all part of a supercontinent, which he termed Pangea (meaning all land). It is bordered by the Caribbean, North American, Pacific, and Nazca tectonic plates. A map of the ocean floor reveals a deep underwater trench (dark blue line) running along the southern coast of Mexico, defining the boundary between two tectonic plates. The resulting magma ascends through the crust, producing a mountain chain with many volcanoes. Mt. The Pacific plate is subducting beneath the Philippine Sea plate to the east while the west/northwestern part of the Philippine Sea plate is subducting beneath the continental Eurasian plate. As the mid-ocean ridge separating the Farallon and Pacific Plates entered the subduction zone, the Farallon Plate separated into the Juan de Fuca and Cocos Plates. Without warning the plane flew right through the eruption cloud at 25,000 feet (7,500 meters) altitude. If the seafloor rises or falls, giant sea waves (a tsunami) can form. By the end of 1967 the Earths surface had been mapped into a series of plates (Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\)). The most famous example of a transform boundary is the San Andreas Fault in California. The Philippine Sea Plate. 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. This plate is moving north north east towards the Eurasia plate. This plate is moving north east towards the Caribbean and North America plates. For example the Juan de Fuca Plate is actually three separate plates (Gorda, Juan de Fuca, and Explorer) that all move in the same general direction but at slightly different rates. Are transform boundaries continental or oceanic? Credit: Photo courtesy of Robert J. Lillie. Lake Clark National Park The physical landscape was an important component of the practical and spiritual aspects of Native Americans lives. The Cocos Plate is a relatively small sized, triangular-shaped oceanic plate located just west of Mexico and the Caribbean. Mazama, erupted and collapsed 7,700 years ago, forming the large cavity (caldera) that now holds Crater Lake. Explain why the Nootka Fault is a transform fault, and show the relative sense of motion along the fault with two small arrows. Ancient magma chamber rocks can be exposed if subduction stops and the volcanoes erode away. The west side of California is moving north, and the east side is moving south. 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. Silica-rich ash melted and coated the hot engine turbines with glass, causing all four of them to shut down. The park is a complex amalgamation of blocks of continental and oceanic crust that have slammed into North America. Divergent boundaries are spreading boundaries, where new oceanic crust is created to fill in the space as the plates move apart. The rising hot water causes overlying rock to melt, generating magma that at times erupts out on the surface as lava flows and other materials forming Mt. Cocos Island rides on it.. The initial magma formed as mantle rock melts beneath a subduction zone has low silica (basalt) composition. Incipient rifting has begun along the Great Rift Valley of eastern Africa, extending from Ethiopia and Djibouti on the Gulf of Aden (Red Sea) all the way south to Malawi. Note that the dark blue line does not run further up the coast. It formed millions of years ago when the Farallon Plate split into the Cocos Plate and the Nazca Plate.. The map shows the major tectonic plates that compose Earth's crust and upper mantle Arrows indicate direction of plate movement and the size of the arrows indicate rate of movement. (Note that spreading rates are typically double the velocities of the two plates moving away from a ridge.). Examples of ocean-continent convergent boundaries are subduction of the Nazca Plate under South America (which has created the Andes Range) and subduction of the Juan de Fuca Plate under North America (creating the mountains Garibaldi, Baker, St. Helens, Rainier, Hood, and Shasta, collectively known as the Cascade Range). The North American Plate . When caught between the converging Juan de Fuca and North American plates, the pillows and other ocean layers can be lifted upward to more than a mile above sea level. This beauty is part of the reason that residents and visitors have learned to tolerate, and develop ways to mitigate, the effects of earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptionsbeasts that are consequences of the same tectonic forces that create the regions beauty. 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. Plate borders the North American Plate, the South American Plate, the Nazca Plate and the Cocos Plate. Novarupta Lava Dome Garibaldi to Lassen Peak, coincides with the north-to-south extent of the subducting plate boundary. In the past, that was true. Legal. Along much of the boundary, the bulk of the motion occurs along the San Andreas Fault. Pangea began to rift apart along a line between Africa and Asia and between North America and South America at around 200 Ma. The northern boundary of the Cocos Plate is the Middle America Trench. Granite rocks found in national parks in the Sierra Nevada are the cooled and eroded remnants of magma chambers that fed ancient subduction zone volcanoes in California. St. Helens in 1980. Images above modified from Oregon's Island in the Sky: Geology Road Guide to Marys Peak, by Robert J. Lillie, Wells Creek Publishers, 75 pp., 2017, www.amazon.com/dp/1540611965. And very large parks in the Southern Alaska Subduction Zone display magnificent mountains, rock layers and active volcanoes that tell the story ongoing plate convergence along the North Pacific Coast. This plate includes all of North America, Greenland, the eastern most part of Russia, northern Japan, and the northwestern part of the Atlantic ocean. Some geological processes act so slowly that we may think of the Earth as rock-solid and unmoving. This situation may not continue for too much longer, however. The northern boundary of the Cocos Plate is the Middle America Trench. Remove unwanted regions from map data QGIS. 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. Later, most of the settlers coming on the Oregon Trail continued past central Oregon and Washington to the lush farmland of the Willamette Valley and Puget Sound, the low-lying region between the two rising mountain ranges. The Nazca plate is a large tectonic plate that underlies the Pacific Ocean near the western coast of South America. Copalis River, Washington Increased temperature and pressure at that depth cause the rocks to metamorphose and dehydrate (sweat). Eventually Africa will split apart. The Caribbean Plate is a mostly oceanic tectonic plate underlying Central America and the Caribbean Sea off the northern coast of South America . Poking through the mass of some of the highest mountains in North America are very young volcanoes formed by the ongoing Pacific Plate subduction. MORB Mid ocean ridge basalt subduction zones 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 . The volcanoes are forming above the region where the top of the subducting Juan de Fuca Plate reaches about 50 miles (80 kilometers) depth. It runs along the west coast of Mexico and western Caribbean countries. Transform faults do not just connect divergent boundaries. Credit: Photo courtesy of Robert J. Lillie. The original composite volcano was about 7,000 feet (2,000 meters) high, but lost about 2,500 feet (750 meters) of its height. This plate makes up all of Antarctica and much of the surrounding ocean. Over the next 50 million years, it is likely that there will be full development of the east African rift and creation of new ocean floor. What type of plate boundary is North American and Eurasian Plates? Accessibility StatementFor more information contact us [email protected]. Some of the resulting magma makes it all the way to the surface and forms Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, Mount Shasta and other spectacular volcanoes of the Cascade Range. More recent studies of continental matchups and the magnetic ages of ocean-floor rocks have enabled us to reconstruct the history of the break-up of Pangea. Remove the Oregon quarter to reveal cooled magma chamber rocks below. Subduction of the Cocos plate beneath the North American plate along the Middle American Trench in Mexico generates large to great earthquakes every 30-100 years. 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. What type of plate boundary is between the Nazca and Cocos Plate? It is named after Cocos Island, the only emergent island on the plate. Much of the stable plate is under water and is called the Caribbean ocean . Boundaries between the plates are of three types: divergent (i.e., moving apart), convergent (i.e., moving together), and transform (moving side by side). 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. The southerly side is a divergent boundary with the Antarctic Plate called the Southeast Indian Ridge (SEIR). The Philippine Sea plate is tectonically unusual in that almost all the boundaries are convergent. Plate Tectonics and Our National ParksSite Index, Plate TectonicsThe Unifying Theory of Geology, Tectonic Settings of NPS SitesMaster List, ORCAOregon Caves National Monument, Oregon [, SEKIKings Canyon National Park, California[, YOSEYosemite National Park, California[. What plate boundary is the Philippines and Eurasian Plate? The Philippine Sea Plate has an area of approximately 3400 square kilometers. Many rift valleys are part of " triple junctions," a type of divergent boundary where three tectonic plates meet at about 120 angles. The mafic magma produced adjacent to the subduction zone rises to the base of the continental crust and leads to partial melting of the crustal rock. The Cascade Volcanoes extend in a north-south line from Mt. Regional tectonics of Central America are mainly controlled by the collision of the Cocos and the Caribbean plates. Most of the sedimentary rocks formed from layers of sand and mud deposited in the ocean. At present, North and South America, Europe, and Africa are moving with their respective portions of the Atlantic Ocean. Modified from Oregon's Island in the Sky: Geology Road Guide to Marys Peak, by Robert J. Lillie, Wells Creek Publishers, 75 pp., 2017, www.amazon.com/dp/1540611965. This plate includes all of Africa and the surrounding ocean, including the eastern Atlantic Ocean, the surrounding Antarctic Ocean, and the western Indian ocean. 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). The colliding continental material will not be subducted because it is too light (i.e., because it is composed largely of light continental rocks [SIAL]), but the root of the oceanic plate will eventually break off and sink into the mantle. Subduction zones occur when one or both of the tectonic plates are composed of oceanic crust. Listing total number of features into an ArcGIS Online feature pop-up, Convergent boundaries: where two plates are colliding. Western Mexico, where the young and small Rivera Plate and the adjacent large Cocos Plate are subducting beneath the North American Plate, is a unique . The Guerrero and Oaxaca regions of southern Mexico also experience regular SSEs. Dont worry if you cant name them all. (Click on arrows and slide left and right to see labels.). This subduction forms the volcanoes of Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, also known as the Central America Volcanic Arc. . This plate includes Australia and much of the surrounding ocean. Sandstone and shale layers at Kenai Fjords are commonly metamorphosed and were so deformed during subduction and uplift that they are vertical in places. Similarly the South American Plate extends across the western part of the southern Atlantic Ocean, while the European and African plates each include part of the eastern Atlantic Ocean. 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. Kenai Fjords National Park Garibaldi in southern British Columbia, through Washington and Oregon, to Lassen Peak in northern California. The subducting boundary through Indonesia is not parallel to the biogeographical Wallace line that separates the indigenous fauna of Asia from that of Australasia. The triangular zone of partial melting near the ridge crest is approximately 60 km thick and the proportion of magma is about 10% of the rock volume, thus producing crust that is about 6 km thick. Wrangell, a 14,163 foot (4,317 meter) volcano that last erupted during the early part of the 20th Century. Contents1 What boundary [] The Cocos Plate is a small, oceanic plate just to the west of Central America. Along these boundaries, earthquakes are common and magma (molten rock) rises from the Earths mantle to the surface, solidifying to create new oceanic crust. Step 2/2. Redoubt Volcano The eastern boundary is a transform fault, the Panama Fracture Zone. Photo courtesy of Robert J. Lillie. There is strong evidence around the margins of the Atlantic Ocean that this process has taken place before. 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. Cocos Tectonic Plate Wrangell (left) and Mt. Since there are convection currents in the mantle,. Visitors to Olympic National Park, Oregon Caves National Monument, or Redwood National and State Parks can look down and imagine the top of the Juan de Fuca Plate about 10 miles (16 kilometers) beneath their feet. Within the past few million years, rifting has taken place in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, and also within the Gulf of California. Taiwan area is the collision boundary between the Philippine Sea plate and the Eurasia plate, which has complex interaction, attracting much attention[3033]. Mazama, Aniakchak no longer holds a large lake because the caldera wall is breached. Another divergent plate boundary is the East Pacific Rise, which separates the massive Pacific plate from the Nazca, Cocos, and North American plates. See Appendix 3 for Exercise 10.4 answers. Kenai Fjords National Park lies within a coastal mountain range (accretionary wedge) formed as the Pacific Plate subducts beneath southern Alaska. South America plate, Antarctic plate, Eurasia plate, North America plate, Arabia plate, India plate, Australia plate. Like Mt. And, as at Mt. The boundary between the Pacific and North American plates in California is a transform plate boundary marked by the San Andreas strike-slip fault. Five park sites in southern Alaska showcase landscapes formed by the subduction of the northward-moving Pacific Plate beneath North America. It is released when the oceanic crust is heats and then rises and mixes with the overlying mantle. Between 200 and 150 Ma, rifting started between South America and Africa and between North America and Europe, and India moved north toward Asia. Identifying port numbers for ArcGIS Online Basemap? The water rises and melts rock in its path. Left image St. Helens in 1980. 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. A continent-continent collision occurs when a continent or large island that has been moved along with subducting oceanic crust collides with another continent (Figure \(\PageIndex{8}\)). On Dec. 15, 1989 a jet with 244 passengers and crew was en route from Amsterdam to Anchorage. In 1989 and 1990, Mt. This contortion attests to the great forces that squeezed and lifted the layers from the sea. Find the plate boundary between the Juan de Fuca Plate (JF) and the North American Plate (NA). Vents and fractures (also called fissures ) in these mid-ocean ridges allow magma and gases to escape into the ocean. 100% (1 rating) SOLUTION: * The plate boundaries moving towards each other are called the convergent plate boundaries. The low region between the two mountain ranges is the Puget Sound area of Washington and the Willamette Valley in Oregon. At transform boundaries lithosphere is neither created nor destroyed. Illustrations above modified from Earth: Portrait of a Planet", by S. Marshak, 2001, W. W. Norton & Comp., New York. 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. Redoubt, on the eastern side of the park, had four explosive eruptions that resulted in large volumes of ash and mudflows. What type of plate boundaies are found between the Cocos, Nazca, and Pacific plates? Now suppose the subduction processes that form the volcanoes were to stop, shutting off the magma supply that feeds the volcanoes. Sites in the Sierra Nevada Mountains reveal the eroded roots of an ancient volcanic range that formed when the subduction zone extended much farther south. Dramatic examples of these layers in tilted and contorted forms can be found in Olympic National Park and elsewhere along the coast and in the mountains. At an ocean-continent convergent boundary, the oceanic plate is pushed under the continental plate in the same manner as at an ocean-ocean boundary. Finally, using a highlighter or colored pencil, label as many of the boundaries as you can as divergent, convergent, or transform. The major plates are Eurasia, Pacific, India, Australia, North America, South America, Africa, and Antarctic. Cocos and Rivera Plates Maximilian Goetz. Pillow basalt layers formed more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) below the surface of the ocean are now almost a mile above sea-level on Hurricane Ridge Road in Olympic National Park, Washington. Magma from the mantle pushing up to fill the voids left by divergence of the two plates, Magma cooling more slowly in the lower part of the new crust and forming gabbro bodies, Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Plates tect2 en by the. There are also numerous small plates (e.g., Juan de Fuca, Cocos, Nazca, Scotia, Philippine, Caribbean), and many very small plates or sub-plates. Is the Nazca plate convergent or divergent? Mt. Modified from "Beauty and the Beast: Plate Tectonics and the Landscapes of the Pacific Northwest", by Robert J. Lillie, Wells Creek Publishers, 92 pp., www.amazon.com/dp.1512211893. This plate starts at the western edge of South America and stretches east into the southwestern parst of the Atlantic Ocean. During the same period, the Atlantic Ocean began to open up between northern Africa and North America, and India broke away from Antarctica. Divergent boundaries are spreading boundaries, where new oceanic crust is created from magma derived from partial melting of the mantle caused by decompression as hot mantle rock from depth is moved toward the surface (Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\)). But parks in the Cascade Mountains within the same subduction zone are dramatically different. Three others, Aniakchak National Monument, Katmai National Park, and Lake Clark National Park, are farther inland, along the active volcanic arc. Not surprisingly, many of the engravings depict landscapes of national parks. Transform boundaries are places where plates slide sideways past each other. All volcanic eruptions in Iceland, such as the 1973 eruption of Eldfell, the 1783 eruption of Laki, and the 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajkull, are caused by the North American and the Eurasian Plates moving apart, which is a result of divergent plate boundary forces.