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The figure is a schematic diagram depicting a subduction zone. The subduction slab on the right enters the mantle with a varying temperature gradient while importing water in a downward motion. A model of the subducting Farallon slab under North America. In geology, the slab is a significant constituent of subduction zones. [1]
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Obduction zones occurs when the continental plate is pushed under the oceanic plate, but this is unusual as the relative densities of the tectonic plates favours subduction of the oceanic plate. This causes the oceanic plate to buckle and usually results in a new mid-ocean ridge forming and turning the obduction into subduction. [citation needed]
At a subduction zone the relatively cold, dense oceanic crust sinks down into the mantle, forming the downward convecting limb of a mantle cell, which is the strongest driver of plate motion. The relative importance and interaction of other proposed factors such as active convection, upwelling inside the mantle, and tidal drag of the Moon is ...
Subduction zones are areas where one lithospheric plate slides beneath another at a convergent boundary due to lithospheric density differences. These plates dip at an average of 45° but can vary. Subduction zones are often marked by an abundance of earthquakes, the result of internal deformation of the plate, convergence with the opposing ...
Subduction zone physics: Sinking of the oceanic lithosphere (sediments, crust, mantle), by the contrast of density between the cold and old lithosphere and the hot asthenospheric mantle wedge, is the strongest force (but not the only one) needed to drive plate motion and is the dominant mode of mantle convection. [citation needed]
The Tonga–Kermadec Ridge is an oceanic ridge in the south-west Pacific Ocean underlying the Tonga–Kermadec island arc.It is a result of the most linear, fastest converging, and seismically active subduction boundary on Earth, the Kermadec–Tonga subduction zone, and consequently has the highest density of submarine volcanoes.
The New Britain subduction zone is a continuum with the south Solomon's and Vanuatu subduction, which are also polarity-reversal. [10] It is possible that the collision to the west of the 30–35 km (19–22 mi) thick Ontong Java Plateau with the Vitiaz Trench from about 25 million years ago initiated this polarity reversal.