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Movements of tectonic plates create volcanoes along the plate boundaries, which erupt and form mountains. A volcanic arc system is a series of volcanoes that form near a subduction zone where the crust of a sinking oceanic plate melts and drags water down with the subducting crust. [9]
Mid-ocean ridge – Basaltic underwater mountain system formed by plate tectonic spreading; Mud volcano – Landform created by the eruption of mud or slurries, water and gases; Oceanic trench – Long and narrow depressions of the sea floor; Pull-apart basin – Type of basin in geology
Plate tectonics was a suitable explanation for seafloor spreading, and the acceptance of plate tectonics by the majority of geologists resulted in a major paradigm shift in geological thinking. It is estimated that along Earth's mid-ocean ridges every year 2.7 km 2 (1.0 sq mi) of new seafloor is formed by this process. [50]
In the 1990s, it was proposed that Martian Crustal Dichotomy was created by plate tectonic processes. [104] Scientists have since determined that it was created either by upwelling within the Martian mantle that thickened the crust of the Southern Highlands and formed Tharsis [105] or by a giant impact that excavated the Northern Lowlands. [106]
Convergent boundaries are areas where plates move toward each other and collide. These are also known as compressional or destructive boundaries. 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 ...
Subduction of the Pacific plate beneath the Australian plate and Tonga plate, forming the complex New Zealand to New Guinea subduction/transform boundaries. Collision of the Eurasian plate and the African plate formed the Pontic Mountains in Turkey. Subduction of the Pacific plate beneath the Mariana plate formed the Mariana Trench.
Cartoon of a tectonic collision between two continents. In geology, continental collision is a phenomenon of plate tectonics that occurs at convergent boundaries.Continental collision is a variation on the fundamental process of subduction, whereby the subduction zone is destroyed, mountains produced, and two continents sutured together.
Mountain ranges are formed by a variety of geological processes, but most of the significant ones on Earth are the result of plate tectonics. [2] Mountain ranges are also found on many planetary mass objects in the Solar System and are likely a feature of most terrestrial planets.