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The plate formed because the triple junction had converted to an unstable form surrounded on all sides by transform faults, due to the development of a kink in one of the plate boundaries. The "Pacific Triangle", the oldest part of the Pacific plate, created during the initial stages of plate formation, is located just east of the Mariana ...
The Cascadia subduction zone is a 960 km (600 mi) fault at a convergent plate boundary, about 100–200 km (70–100 mi) off the Pacific coast, that stretches from northern Vancouver Island in Canada to Northern California in the United States.
Major active fractures zones worldwide are in the orange shaded areas perpendicular to the black lines of the mid-ocean ridges of the major oceanic plates. Fracture zones are common features in the geology of oceanic basins. Globally most fault zones are located on divergent plate boundaries on oceanic crust.
The East Pacific Rise near Easter Island is the fastest spreading mid-ocean ridge, with a spreading rate of over 15 cm/yr. [2] The Pacific plate moves generally towards the northwest at between 7 and 11 cm/yr while the Juan De Fuca plate has an east-northeasterly movement of some 4 cm/yr. [3]
Tectonic map of Alaska and northwestern Canada showing main faults and historic earthquakes. The Queen Charlotte Fault is an active transform fault that marks the boundary of the North American plate and the Pacific plate. [1] [2] It is Canada's right-lateral strike-slip equivalent to the San Andreas Fault to the south in California. [3]
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.
Major active fault zones of New Zealand showing variation in displacement vector of Pacific plate relative to Australian plate along the boundary. The Marlborough fault system (also known as Marlborough tectonic domain [2]) is a set of four large dextral strike-slip faults and other related structures in the northern part of the South Island, New Zealand, which transfer displacement between ...
To the northwest of the triple junction the Pacific plate currently has 15 degrees of oblique convergence, passing under the North American plate along the Queen Charlotte transform fault zone. [3] The Explorer plate is a small chunk of the Juan de Fuca plate that broke away from the Juan de Fuca plate about 3.5 Ma and has moved much slower ...