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The Nazca plate or Nasca plate, [2] named after the Nazca region of southern Peru, is an oceanic tectonic plate in the eastern Pacific Ocean basin off the west coast of South America. The ongoing subduction , along the Peru–Chile Trench , of the Nazca plate under the South American plate is largely responsible for the Andean orogeny .
Map showing the location of Nazca Ridge off the west coast of Peru. The Nazca Ridge is a submarine ridge, located on the Nazca plate off the west coast of South America.This plate and ridge are currently subducting under the South American plate at a convergent boundary known as the Peru-Chile Trench at approximately 7.7 cm (3.0 in) per year. [1]
Farallon plate – Ancient oceanic plate that has mostly subducted under the North American plate (split into the Cocos, Explorer, Juan de Fuca, Gorda plates, Nazca plate, and Rivera plates) Florida plate (United States) Hearne Craton – Craton in northern Canada (Canada)
The trench is also a part of the Chile triple junction, an unusual junction that consists of a mid-oceanic ridge and the Chile Rise being subducted under the South American plate at the Peru–Chile Trench. Two seamount ridges within the Nazca plate enter the subduction zone along this trench: the Nazca Ridge and the Juan Fernández Ridge.
The Cocos Plate moves at 41 degrees at a rate of 83±3 km per million years. [3] The location of the hotspot over time is recorded in the oceanic plate as the Carnegie and Cocos Ridges. The Carnegie Ridge is on the Nazca plate is 600 km (373 mi) long and up to 300 km (186 mi) wide. It is orientated parallel to the plate movement, and its ...
The Cocos–Nazca spreading centre (or the Cocos–Nazca spreading system) is the divergent boundary between the Cocos and Nazca plates. It extends from close to the East Pacific Rise northwest of the Galápagos Islands , to the southeastern end of the Middle America Trench offshore Panama .
The adjoining plates are the Nazca plate, the South American plate, the African plate, the Somali plate, the Indo-Australian plate, the Pacific plate, and, across a transform boundary, the Scotia and South Sandwich plates. The Antarctic plate has an area of about 60,900,000 km 2 (23,500,000 sq mi). [3] It is Earth's fifth-largest tectonic plate.
Off the western coast of South America, the Nazca Plate subducts beneath the South America Plate at a rate—at Hudson's latitude—of about 9 centimetres per year (3.5 in/year). [17] This subduction is responsible for volcanism in the SVZ [10] and the rest of the Andean Volcanic Belt [17] except for the AVZ, where the Antarctic Plate subducts ...