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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).
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)
The regional geology of North America usually encompasses the geographic regions of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, the continental United States, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. [1] The parts of the North American Plate that are not occupied by North American countries are usually not discussed as part of the regional geology.
The Queen Charlotte Fault on the Pacific Northwest coast of North America; The Motagua Fault, which crosses through Guatemala, is a transform boundary between the southern edge of the North American plate and the northern edge of the Caribbean plate. New Zealand's Alpine Fault is another active transform boundary.
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] During the rifting, South America tore away from North America and headed southward.
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. [5] Faults tend to be geologically active, experiencing earthquakes, volcanic activity, mountain-building, and oceanic trench formation.
Smartville Block – Volcanic arc accreted onto the North American Plate; Sonoma Volcanics – Geologic formation of volcanic origin in California; Sonomia Terrane – Crustal block accreted onto the North American Plate in Northwest Nevada; Spavinaw terrane – Intrusive and volcanic rocks in the mid-continent region of the United States
Tectonic subsidence is the sinking of the Earth's crust on a large scale, relative to crustal-scale features or the geoid. [1] The movement of crustal plates and accommodation spaces produced by faulting [2] brought about subsidence on a large scale in a variety of environments, including passive margins, aulacogens, fore-arc basins, foreland basins, intercontinental basins and pull-apart basins.