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A lee trough, also known as a dynamic trough, is "A pressure trough formed on the lee side of a mountain range in situations where the wind is blowing with a substantial component across the mountain ridge; often seen on United States weather maps east of the Rocky Mountains, and sometimes east of the Appalachians, where it is less pronounced."
The Continental Divide in North America in red and other drainage divides in North America The Continental Divide in Central America and South America. The Continental Divide of the Americas (also known as the Great Divide, the Western Divide or simply the Continental Divide; Spanish: Divisoria continental de las Américas, Gran Divisoria) is the principal, and largely mountainous ...
Within the trough is a slowly spreading north–south ridge which may be the result of an offset or gap of approximately 420 kilometres (260 mi) along the main fault trace. The Cayman spreading ridge shows a long-term opening rate of 11–12 mm/yr. [4] The eastern section of the trough has been named the Gonâve Microplate.
The border between North America and South America is at some point on the Darién Mountains watershed that divides along the Colombia–Panama border where the isthmus meets the South American continent (see Darién Gap). Virtually all atlases list Panama as a state falling entirely within North America and/or Central America. [116] [117]
In South America, the Cordillera is known as the Andes Mountains. The Andes, with their parallel chains and the island chains off the coast of Chile , extend through Colombia , Venezuela , Ecuador , Peru , Bolivia , Argentina , and Chile to the southernmost tip of South America at Tierra del Fuego .
The Midcontinent Rift System (MRS) or Keweenawan Rift is a 2,000 km (1,200 mi) long geological rift in the center of the North American continent and south-central part of the North American plate. It formed when the continent's core, the North American craton , began to split apart during the Mesoproterozoic era of the Precambrian , about 1.1 ...
Some troughs look similar to oceanic trenches but possess other tectonic structures. One example is the Lesser Antilles Trough, which is the forearc basin of the Lesser Antilles subduction zone. [8] Also not a trench is the New Caledonia trough, which is an extensional sedimentary basin related to the Tonga-Kermadec subduction zone. [9]
Tectonic map of Alaska and northwestern Canada showing main faults and historic earthquakes. The Queen Charlotte Fault is an active transform fault that marks the boundary of the North American plate and the Pacific plate. [1] [2] It is Canada's right-lateral strike-slip equivalent to the San Andreas Fault to the south in California. [3]