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The location where two plates meet is called a plate boundary. Plate boundaries are where geological events occur, such as earthquakes and the creation of topographic features such as mountains, volcanoes, mid-ocean ridges, and oceanic trenches. The vast majority of the world's active volcanoes occur along plate boundaries, with the Pacific ...
An interplate earthquake occurs at the boundary between two tectonic plates. Earthquakes of this type account for more than 90 percent of the total seismic energy released around the world. [1] If one plate is trying to move past the other, they will be locked until sufficient stress builds up to cause the plates to slip relative to each other.
[48] [49] Massive earthquakes tend to occur along other plate boundaries too, such as along the Himalayan Mountains. [50] With the rapid growth of mega-cities such as Mexico City, Tokyo, and Tehran in areas of high seismic risk, some seismologists are warning that a single earthquake may claim the lives of up to three million people. [51]
Earthquakes are common on the West Coast, with multiple plate boundaries like the San Andreas fault making geologic activity more likely. They are rarer on the East Coast, but they do happen .
In the Himalayan region, where the Indian plate subducts under the Eurasian plate, the largest recorded earthquake was the 1950 Assam–Tibet earthquake, at magnitude 8.7. It is estimated that earthquakes with magnitude 9.0 or larger are expected to occur at an interval of every 800 years, with the highest boundary being a magnitude 10, though ...
Map showing Earth's principal tectonic plates and their boundaries in detail. These plates comprise the bulk of the continents and the Pacific Ocean.For purposes of this list, a major plate is any plate with an area greater than 20 million km 2 (7.7 million sq mi)
While earthquakes are most common along the fault lines of tectonic plates—of which there are seven major ones in the world—the seismic quakes can actually hit anywhere, at any time, according ...
“That plate-boundary fault is normally locked, and stresses build up, and then when it lets go, there can be tens of meters … of slip on that fault, and that’s what causes all the shaking ...