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The oceanic Nazca plate subducts beneath the continental South American plate at the Peru–Chile Trench. Just north of the Nazca plate, the oceanic Cocos plate subducts under the Caribbean plate and forms the Middle America Trench. Oceanic crust of the South American plate subducts under the Caribbean plate in the Lesser Antilles subduction zone.
The Caribbean plate is a mostly oceanic tectonic plate underlying Central America and the Caribbean Sea off the northern coast of South America. 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 Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a mid-ocean ridge (a divergent or constructive plate boundary) located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, and part of the longest mountain range in the world. In the North Atlantic, the ridge separates the North American from the Eurasian plate and the African plate, north and south of the Azores triple junction.
Continental-continental divergent/constructive boundary Oceanic divergent boundary: mid-ocean ridge (cross-section/cut-away view). In plate tectonics, a divergent boundary or divergent plate boundary (also known as a constructive boundary or an extensional boundary) is a linear feature that exists between two tectonic plates that are moving away from each other.
Red indicates the inferred boundaries of the Coast Range Arc. The Coast Range Arc was a large volcanic arc system, extending from northern Washington through British Columbia and the Alaska Panhandle to southwestern Yukon. [1] The Coast Range Arc lies along the western margin of the North American Plate in the Pacific Northwest of western North ...
Tectonic plates generally focus deformation and volcanism at plate boundaries.However, the Hawaii hotspot is more than 3,200 kilometers (1,988 mi) from the nearest plate boundary; [1] while studying it in 1963, Canadian geophysicist J. Tuzo Wilson proposed the hotspot theory to explain these zones of volcanism so far from regular conditions, [3] a theory that has since come into wide acceptance.
Lava domes are common features on volcanoes around the world. Lava domes are known to exist on plate margins as well as in intra-arc hotspots, and on heights above 6000 m and in the sea floor. [ 1 ] Individual lava domes and volcanoes featuring lava domes are listed below.
The North American plate is a tectonic plate containing most of North America, Cuba, the Bahamas, extreme northeastern Asia, and parts of Iceland and the Azores. With an area of 76 million km 2 (29 million sq mi), it is the Earth's second largest tectonic plate, behind the Pacific plate (which borders the plate to the west).