![]() ![]() ![]() For example, sections of Earth’s crust can come together and collide (a “convergent” plate boundary), spread apart (a “divergent” plate boundary), or slide past one another (a “transform” plate boundary). There are many different types of plate boundaries. ![]() Volcanoes are also often found near plate boundaries because molten rock from deep within Earth-called magma-can travel upward at these intersections between plates. When Earth’s tectonic plates grind past one another, enormous amounts of energy can be released in the form of earthquakes. Plate boundaries are important because they are often associated with earthquakes and volcanoes. ![]() That is because its outer surface is composed of about 20 tectonic plates, enormous sections of Earth’s crust that roughly fit together and meet at places called plate boundaries. The Tibetan Plateau, which encompasses approximately 1,000 square miles of land north of the Himalayas, averages around 15,000 feet in elevation.In some ways, Earth resembles a giant jigsaw puzzle. The jagged peaks of the Himalayas are the highest in the world, with Mount Everest reaching 29,029 feet and more than 35 other mountains exceeding 25,000 feet. The Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau, the result of 50 million years of collision between the Indian and Eurasian plates, are the most spectacular manifestation of this type of boundary. Highly metamorphosed rock, like gneiss, is also common. Magma cannot penetrate this thick crust instead, it cools intrusively and forms granite. Instead, the continental crust at these convergent boundaries gets folded, faulted, and thickened, forming great mountain chains of uplifted rock. This results in very little subduction, as most of the rock is too light to be carried very far down into the dense mantle. When plates converge, they do so in one of three settings: oceanic plates collide with each other (forming oceanic-oceanic boundaries), oceanic plates collide with continental plates (forming oceanic-continental boundaries), or continental plates collide with each other (forming continental-continental boundaries).Įarthquakes are common any time large slabs of Earth come into contact with each other, and convergent boundaries are no exception. In fact, most of the Earth's most powerful quakes have occurred at or near these boundaries.ĭomdomegg / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0 ( Text labels added by Brooks Mitchell)Ĭontinental-continental convergent boundaries pit large slabs of crust against each other. Oceanic plates are made up of heavier basalt, the result of magma flows from mid-ocean ridges. The crust that makes up continental plates is thicker yet less dense than oceanic crust because of the lighter rocks and minerals that compose it. Convergent plate boundaries are often the sites of earthquakes, volcanoes, and other significant geological activity.Įarth's surface is made up of two types of lithospheric plates: continental and oceanic.Each one is unique because of the density of the plates involved. There are three types of convergent plate boundaries: oceanic-oceanic boundaries, oceanic-continental boundaries, and continental-continental boundaries.When two tectonic plates move toward each other and collide, they form a convergent plate boundary. ![]()
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