Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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).
As the edge of North America moved away from the hot rift zone, it began to cool and subside beneath the new Atlantic Ocean. This once-active divergent plate boundary became the passive, trailing edge of westward moving North America. In plate tectonic terms, the Atlantic Plain is known as a classic example of a passive continental margin. [20]
On a map showing only volcanic rocks, the west coast of North America shows a striking continuous north–south structure, the American Cordillera. The North American Cordillera extends up and down the coast of North America and roughly from the Great Plains westward to the Pacific Ocean , narrowing somewhat from north to south.
The cordillera running along the entire Pacific coast gives evidence of the theory of plate tectonics. And looking south from Canada’s arctic islands to Panama’s rain forests, we see the influence of latitude and elevation on natural vegetation. I made this map during the winter of 2020-21 to keep busy during the pandemic.
These plates are often grouped with an adjacent principal plate on a tectonic plate world map. For purposes of this list, a microplate is any plate with an area less than 1 million km 2 . Some models identify more minor plates within current orogens (events that lead to a large structural deformation of Earth's lithosphere ) like the Apulian ...
Where the plates meet, their relative motion determines the type of plate boundary (or fault): convergent, divergent, or transform. The relative movement of the plates typically ranges from zero to 10 cm annually. Faults tend to be geologically active, experiencing earthquakes, volcanic activity, mountain-building, and oceanic trench formation.
Maps of the New World had been produced since the 16th century. The history of cartography of the United States begins in the 18th century, after the declared independence of the original Thirteen Colonies on July 4, 1776, during the American Revolutionary War (1776–1783). Later, Samuel Augustus Mitchell published a map of the United States ...
Image:Blank US Map with borders.svg, a blank states maps with borders. Image:BlankMap-USA.png, a map with no borders and states separated by transparency. Image:US map - geographic.png, a geographical map. On Wikimedia Commons, a free online media resource: commons:Category:Maps of the United States, the category for all maps with subcategories.