Rainier National Park is an active composite volcano rising more than 14,000 feet above sea level. Right image In central and southern California the ancient volcanoes have largely eroded away. The ocean area along southern Asia up to the India plate is also a part of the Australia plate. The Cocos Plate is a young oceanic tectonic plate beneath the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Central America, named for Cocos Island, which rides upon it. Plate Tectonics and Our National ParksSite Index, Plate TectonicsThe Unifying Theory of Geology, Tectonic Settings of NPS SitesMaster List, ORCAOregon Caves National Monument, Oregon [, SEKIKings Canyon National Park, California[, YOSEYosemite National Park, California[. Convergent boundaries, where two plates are moving toward each other, are of three types, depending on whether oceanic or continental crust is present on either side of the boundary. This plate is small. St. Helens in 1980. Parks in the Cascadia Subduction Zone dramatically display the two distinct mountain ranges the Coast Range just above where the Juan de Fuca Plate begins to subduct, and the volcanic Cascade Range farther inland, where the top of the plate is deeper. Because the oceanic crust formed by spreading on the mid-Atlantic ridge is not currently being subducted (except in the Caribbean), the Atlantic Ocean is slowly getting bigger, and the Pacific Ocean is getting smaller. And as time ticks on, the region awaits sudden release of energy locked between the converging plates as a devastating earthquake. The Caribbean Plate is a mostly oceanic tectonic plate underlying Central America and the Caribbean Sea off the northern coast of South America . The part of the plate around the Australia plate is moving southwards. The original composite volcano was about 7,000 feet (2,000 meters) high, but lost about 2,500 feet (750 meters) of its height. Question: Tectonic Plates Use this map to answer the following questions. A transform plate boundary developed where the Pacific Plate was in contact with the North American Plate and the volcanism ceased in central California. The vent was the source for most of the ash and pyroclastic flows expelled during the 1912 eruptions, and has since filled with a lava dome known as Novarupta. Based on Keary and Vine, 1996, Global Tectonics (2ed), Blackwell Science Ltd., Oxford. Photo courtesy of Robert J. Lillie. The eastern boundary is a transform fault, the Panama Fracture Zone. Shasta in California, and other Cascade Volcanoes. It is named after Cocos Island, the only emergent island on the plate. The western boundary is another mid-ocean ridge, the East Pacific Rise. Is the Nazca plate convergent or divergent? Mount Rainier is a 14,000 foot (4,300 meter) volcano in the Cascade Range developed above the place where the subducting Juan de Fuca Plate reaches sufficient depth to release hot fluids into the overriding North American Plate. Visits to coastal NPS sites in the Pacific Northwest can help us appreciate the landscapes that develop over time because of these large quakes, and learn how we are preparing our homes, communities, and infrastructure for the next Big One.. This situation may not continue for too much longer, however. Farther inland, the subducting plate reaches depths where it sweats hot water. Rainier in Mt. Modified from Parks and Plates: The Geology of our National Parks, Monuments and Seashores, by Robert J. Lillie, New York, W. W. Norton and Company, 298 pp., 2005, www.amazon.com/dp/0134905172. Trees along the Washington coast were killed by salt-water invasion when the land suddenly dropped during the last great Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake in the year 1700. The northern boundary of the Cocos Plate is the Middle America Trench. Many National Park Service sites are found in active and ancient subduction zones. Mount Rainier is a 14,000 foot (4,300 meter) volcano in the Cascade Range developed above the place where the subducting Juan de Fuca Plate reaches sufficient depth to release hot fluids into the overriding North American Plate. USGS photo. Left image The series of hot spots that has been identified in the Atlantic Ocean may also have existed for several hundred million years, and thus may have contributed to rifting in roughly the same place on at least two separate occasions (Figure \(\PageIndex{13}\)). A visit to Olympic National Park is an opportunity to witness features of an accretionary wedge as they develop. The northern side is a divergent boundary with the Cocos Plate, the Galapagos Rise. What type of boundary is the Philippine plate? It is released when the oceanic crust is heats and then rises and mixes with the overlying mantle. This page titled 10.4: Plate, Plate Motions, and Plate Boundary Processes is shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Steven Earle (BCCampus) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request. USGS photo. , Divergent boundaries where two plates are moving apart. Stack the quarters with Washington on top, Oregon in the middle and California on the bottom. This beauty is part of the reason that residents and visitors have learned to tolerate, and develop ways to mitigate, the effects of earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptionsbeasts that are consequences of the same tectonic forces that create the regions beauty. It runs from the tip of South America eastwards to form a barrier between the Antarctic plate and the South America plate. What type of plate boundary is between the Nazca and Cocos Plate? The volcano is still active, having erupted in 1931. The two parallel mountain ranges influence many of the physical and cultural aspects of the Pacific Northwest. South America plate, Pacific plate, Antarctic plate, Cocos plate. Yosemite Valley and Half Dome. The Pacific Plate is almost entirely oceanic, but it does include the part of California west of the San Andreas Fault. Rocks in Yosemite, Kings Canyon, Sequoia, and Joshua Tree national parks contain exumed magma chamber rock that formed beneath the ancient volcanoes. But the incident highlighted the importance of monitoring volcanic activity and making the information immediately available to the airline industry and other segments of the public. Contents1 What boundary [] and Alberta are also a result of continent-continent collisions. Many rift valleys are part of " triple junctions," a type of divergent boundary where three tectonic plates meet at about 120 angles. Like Mt. What is the example of transform boundary? The physical landscape was an important component of the practical and spiritual aspects of Native Americans lives. The Cocos plate is a geologically young oceanic tectonic plate.It is beneath the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Central America. Is the Nazca Plate a convergent boundary? Farther east the Juan de Fuca Plate descends deeper and deeper. If two tectonic plates collide, they form a convergent plate boundary. Kenai Fjords National Park 20 Million Years Ago The Sierra Nevada are the eroded remnants of the volcanic arc developed when the Farallon Plate subducted beneath the continent. The eruption of Mt. By the end of 1967 the Earths surface had been mapped into a series of plates (Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\)). Where tectonic plates converge, the one with dense, thin oceanic crust subducts beneath the one with thick, more buoyant continental crust. The North American Plate, for example, rotates counter-clockwise; the Eurasian Plate rotates clockwise. Photo courtesy of Robert J. Lillie. Observations. When caught between the converging Juan de Fuca and North American plates, the pillows and other ocean layers can be lifted upward to more than a mile above sea level. 100% (1 rating) SOLUTION: * The plate boundaries moving towards each other are called the convergent plate boundaries. Between the African plate and the Indian plate Choose. An example is the San Andreas Fault, which extends from the southern end of the Juan de Fuca Ridge to the northern end of the East Pacific Rise (ridge) in the Gulf of California (Figures 10.28 and 10.29). Lake Clark National Park Subduction zones form where a plate with thinner (less-buoyant) oceanic crust descends beneath a plate with thicker (more-buoyant) continental crust. Mt. Storms coming in from the Pacific Ocean drop most of their moisture on the Coast Range and Cascades, leaving eastern Oregon and Washington high and dry. This plate is small. This plate is small. Volcanic and metamorphic rocks exposed in Kenai Fjords National Park reveal the incredible forces that occur at an ocean/continent subduction zone. Modified from The Geology of our National Parks, Monuments and Seashores, by Robert J. Lillie, New York, W. W. Norton and Company, 298 pp., 2005, www.amazon.com/dp/0134905172. Pillow basalt layers formed more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) below the surface of the ocean are now almost a mile above sea-level on Hurricane Ridge Road in Olympic National Park, Washington. The addition of water to the hot mantle lowers the rockss melting point and leads to the formation of magma (flux melting) (Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\)). Before we talk about processes at plate boundaries, its important to point out that there are never gaps between plates. This plate is moving north north east towards the Eurasia plate. A mature island arc develops into a chain of relatively large islands (such as Japan or Indonesia) as more and more volcanic material is extruded and sedimentary rocks accumulate around the islands. Produced under a Cooperative Agreement for earth science education between the National Park Service's Geologic Resources Division and the American Geosciences Institute. With continued uplift and erosion, most of the volcanic material would erode. Photo courtesy of Robert J. Lillie. A continent-continent collision occurs when a continent or large island that has been moved along with subducting oceanic crust collides with another continent (Figure \(\PageIndex{8}\)). The Philippine Plate, also known as the Philippine Sea Plate, is a small tectonic plate between the Eurasian Plate and the Pacific Plate. And, as at Mt. Examples of ocean-ocean convergent zones are subduction of the Pacific Plate beneath the North America Plate south of Alaska (Aleutian Islands) and beneath the Philippine Plate west of the Philippines, subduction of the India Plate beneath the Eurasian Plate south of Indonesia, and subduction of the Atlantic Plate beneath the Caribbean Plate (see Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\)). Plate Tectonics and Our National Parks (2020), Text and Illustrations by Robert J. Lillie, Emeritus Professor of Geosciences, Oregon State University [E-mail]. Two arms of the triple junction can split to form an entire ocean. The Pacific plate is subducting beneath the Philippine Sea plate to the east while the west/northwestern part of the Philippine Sea plate is subducting beneath the continental Eurasian plate. The San Andreas Fault and Queen Charlotte Fault are transform plate boundaries developing where the Pacific Plate moves northward past the North American Plate. From 1999 to 2008, the United States Mint issued 25-cent coins representing each of the 50 states. Examine the figure below. As discussed in the context of subduction-related volcanism in Chapter 4, the significant volume of water within the subducting material is released as the subducting crust is heated. As the Juan de Fuca Plate (lower cookie) subducts beneath the North American Plate (upper cookie), the layers are scraped off the ocean floor and pile up as the Coast Range. Copalis River, Washington This highly active convergent plate boundary extends along both sides the Philippine Islands, from Luzon in the north to the Celebes Islands in the south. The Cascades form above the line where the subducting plate extends to depths where it heats up, dehydrates and causes magma to form. The Coast Ranges, including the Olympic Mountains, are made of oceanic sediments and hard rocks that were caught in the vise between the converging plates, uplifted, and added to the edge of the continent. A by-product of the metamorphism is the release of hot fluids, especially water. Taiwan area is the collision boundary between the Philippine Sea plate and the Eurasia plate, which has complex interaction, attracting much attention[3033]. Kenai Fjords National Park Transform faults are not limited to oceanic crust and spreading centers; many of them are on continental margins. Adding TravelTime as Impedance in ArcGIS Network Analyst? The apparent line of collision runs between Norway and Sweden, between Scotland and England, through Ireland, through Newfoundland, and the Maritimes, through the northeastern and eastern states, and across the northern end of Florida. Magma from the mantle pushing up to fill the voids left by divergence of the two plates, Magma cooling more slowly in the lower part of the new crust and forming gabbro bodies, Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\): Plates tect2 en by the. This map shows the boundaries between the major plates. Error message | View complete answer on https://www.britannica.com Are the Nazca Plate and South American plates divergent plates? Visitors to Olympic National Park, Oregon Caves National Monument, or Redwood National and State Parks can look down and imagine the top of the Juan de Fuca Plate about 10 miles (16 kilometers) beneath their feet. Olympic National Park, Washington Another divergent plate boundary is the East Pacific Rise, which separates the massive Pacific plate from the Nazca, Cocos, and North American plates. Boundaries between the plates are of three types: divergent (i.e., moving apart), convergent (i.e., moving together), and transform (moving side by side). The low region between the two mountain ranges is the Puget Sound area of Washington and the Willamette Valley in Oregon. Along these boundaries, earthquakes are common and magma (molten rock) rises from the Earths mantle to the surface, solidifying to create new oceanic crust. They are part of the volcanic arc that extends northeastward from the Aleutian Islands, across the Alaska Peninsula and Aniakchak National Monument, Katmai and Lake Clark national parks, and then bends eastward to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. The Rocky Mountains in B.C. Gases may be trapped in them under high pressure. Two parallel mountain ranges commonly develop above such a subduction zone a coastal range consisting of sedimentary strata and hard rock lifted out of the sea (accretionary wedge), and a volcanic range farther inland (volcanic arc). Images above modified from Oregon's Island in the Sky: Geology Road Guide to Marys Peak, by Robert J. Lillie, Wells Creek Publishers, 75 pp., 2017, www.amazon.com/dp/1540611965. Three others, Aniakchak National Monument, Katmai National Park, and Lake Clark National Park, are farther inland, along the active volcanic arc. Likewise, individual volcanic eruptions may add only a thin layer to the surface. CC BY. Find the plate boundary between the Juan de Fuca Plate (JF) and the North American Plate (NA). Identifying port numbers for ArcGIS Online Basemap? See Appendix 3 for Exercise 10.4 answers. The buoyancy of the mantle plume material creates a dome within the crust, causing it to fracture in a radial pattern, with three arms spaced at approximately 120 (Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\)). Kenai Fjords National Park lies within a coastal mountain range (accretionary wedge) formed as the Pacific Plate subducts beneath southern Alaska. When the plates suddenly let go, a massive earthquake will shake the entire Pacific Northwest, a series of tsunami waves will pound the Coast, and landslides will make it difficult to reach some of those in need. This plate is rotating counter clockwise in towards the Pacific plate. Another, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, is a vast region that extends across the accretionary wedge and volcanic arc, and is built of accreted terranes. See Appendix 3 for Exercise 10.5 answers. Volcanoes in national parks in the Cascades have eruptive personalities that reflect the complex magma systems associated with subduction zones. It formed millions of years ago when the Farallon Plate split into the Cocos Plate and the Nazca Plate.. The map shows the major tectonic plates that compose Earth's crust and upper mantle Arrows indicate direction of plate movement and the size of the arrows indicate rate of movement. Sandstone and shale layers at Kenai Fjords are commonly metamorphosed and were so deformed during subduction and uplift that they are vertical in places. Most divergent boundaries are located at the oceanic ridges (although some are on land), and the crustal material created at a spreading boundary is always oceanic in character; in other words, it is mafic igneous rock (e.g., basalt or gabbro, rich in ferromagnesian minerals). Basalt lava is thin and runny and will flow for miles and miles. The Cocos Plate in the Pacific Ocean is subducted beneath the Caribbean Plate, just off the western coast of Central America. Rather, it flowed underground to a vent 6 miles (10 kilometers) away! The types are ocean-ocean, ocean-continent, and continent-continent. Roughly 3.2 million square kilometres (1.2 million square miles) in area, the Caribbean Plate borders the North American Plate, the South American Plate, the Nazca Plate and the Cocos Plate. The boundary between the Pacific and North American plates in California is a transform plate boundary marked by the San Andreas strike-slip fault. Modified from Earth: Portrait of a Planet", by S. Marshak, 2001, W. W. Norton & Comp., New York. The Philippine Sea Plate. Transform faults do not just connect divergent boundaries. The Nazca plate is a large tectonic plate that underlies the Pacific Ocean near the western coast of South America. Plates move as rigid bodies, so it may seem surprising that the North American Plate can be moving at different rates in different places. This is what has happened in the Sierra Nevada of central and southern California, as represented by the granite-type rocks of Half Dome within Yosemite National Park shown on the California state quarter. This plate is moving north east towards the Caribbean and North America plates. This can be demonstrated by stacking the three quarters with California on the bottom, overlain by Oregon and then Washington. One of them, Kenai Fjords National Park, lies within the accretionary wedge of uplifting oceanic sedimentary strata and hard crust. This plate is moving north west towards the Eurasia plate. Vents and fractures (also called fissures ) in these mid-ocean ridges allow magma and gases to escape into the ocean. It was preceded by Pannotia (600 to 540 Ma), by Rodinia (1,100 to 750 Ma), and by others before that. Off the Pacific coast, the Cocos plate is subducted beneath both the North American and Caribbean plates, which are separated by a sinistral transcurrent boundary.