Plate Tectonics Paper

I: The objective of this lab was to understand how plate boundaries work. We were to find the major plates and compare and contrast them.

4. The Great Ice Age thrust down over North America and scoured the present day American Midwest.

Plate Tectonics is a scientific theory which study how the Earth’s plates are driven and shaped by geological forces to keep them in constant movement. The theory explains the present-day tectonic behavior of the Earth, particularly the global distribution of mountain building, earthquake activity, and volcanism in a series of linear belt. (Pitman, W.C., 2007)

2. Four massive ranges—the Rockies, the Sierra Nevada, the Cascades, and the Coast Ranges, arose in western North America approximately 135 million to 25 million years ago. According the theory of “Land Bridge,” a “Land Bridge” linked up Asia and North America across the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska.

The three faults being considered are thought to have influenced the character of some 120,000 square miles. The Big Pine, Garlock, and San Andreas faults are all mutually active, deep, long, and steep and noted as being conjugate shears. In concert, the faults have defined a primary strain pattern of relative east-west extension and north-south shortening of the area of 120,000 square miles. The large region is noted for its deformity, with the source of this being a northeast-southwest counterclockwise compressive couple. The compressive couple was potentially supported through drag as a result of the deep-seated movement of rock material from the Pacific region (Hill & Dibblee, 1953). The interaction of the faults in the San Andreas region since the Jurassic period have served to shape and contour the present geology of the land, while a study of the paleontology of the region likewise requires such knowledge to effectively determine conditions at any given point in time.

The west coast of North America has been tectonically and volcanically active for billions of years. The Sierra Nevada Mountains in eastern California were born of volcanoes, and magma has been erupting in the Long Valley to the east of the mountains for over three million years (Bailey, et. al., 1989). However, the climactic eruption of the region occurred relatively recently in the region's geologic history. About 760,000 years ago, a huge explosion of magma warped the Eastern Sierra into the landscape that exists today. The eruption depleted a massive magma chamber below the earth's surface so that the ceiling of the chamber imploded, forming what is now known as

Cenozoic sedimentary rocks predominated to the west and east of the central mountain while plutonic rocks predominated in the peninsular ranges. The irregular contact between these geologic regions reflects the ancient topography of the area. The ancient oceanic crustal plate created an archipelago of a volcanic island. The former's subduction created immense volumes of magma. This resulted to the congealation of plutonic rock in the crust. The local rocks that existed before the tectonic forces uplifted, and erosion capped the deeply buried plutonic rocks that formed a steep and rugged mountains coastline, similar to that present one, which in the west coast of south America.

The New Madrid Fault lies along the western side of Kentucky along the border between Kentucky and Missouri. The New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ) is made up of reactivated faults that were formed when North America began to split apart from Rodinia about 750 million years ago. The NMSZ Is in the middle of the North American tectonic plate. It is an abundant source of intraplate earthquakes. It is the most seismic area

• This earthquake may not have released all of the strain stored in its rocks next to the fault this reveals a potential earthquake in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the near future. The occurrence of the earthquake showed that the Earth did not exhaust all its strain and hence other earthquakes could be expected. However, the dates could not be predicted. The extent of the damage could have been much more devastating for the region, but with the earthquake occurring near the coast this made half of the felt area westward in the Pacific Ocean. The occurrence of aftershocks ten days later reinforces the unpredictability nature and hence makes Geology to be a study that is always evolving. In conclusion, the Earth and the study of cannot be exhausted as every natural occurrence provides a new puzzle to be solved.

The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake tectonic setting was in the outermost shell of earth known as the crust this is composed of rigid plates that have been moving for hundreds of millions of years. Two of these moving plates meet in western California; the boundary between them is a zone of faults, the principal one being the San Andreas fault. The horizontal sliding of the Pacific Plate relative to the North American Plate, causes earthquakes along the San Andreas fault and similar plates near the region. The San Andreas fault is a transform plate boundary, accommodating horizontal relative motions (usgs.gov).

In recorded history, there have been 151 earthquakes in Nevada that were a magnitude of 3.5 or higher. As previously mentioned, the mountain ranges of Nevada are typically bound on one side or the other by a fault. There are quaternary faults that range in ages from less than 150 years to around 1.8 million years in existence. The property damage in Nevada from earthquakes was .2 million dollars between 1196 and 2014 based on information from department of energy for the state. As we studied in our textbook, earthquakes can by a number of things, such as shifting faults, or volcanic

Plate tectonics are very dangerous when they collide,slide,and move apart. They can create mountains like the Appalachian Mountains that used to tower over everything then erosion took place. The Appalachian Mountains were formed by convergent boundaries, convergent boundaries are collide

The Arkoma Basin is one of several foreland basins that formed along the Ouachita Orogenic Belt during the Mississippian and Pennsylvanian time periods. It covers approximately 33,800 square miles and extends from southeastern Oklahoma to central Arkansas (Perry, 1997). The Arkoma Basin is bounded to the north by the Ozark Uplift, to the south by the Ouachita Mountains, to the northwest by the Anadarko Basin, to the southwest by the Arbuckle Uplift, and to the southeast by the Mississippian Embayment (Figure 5). The red box in figure 5 denotes the general location of the study area, which is in the eastern Arkoma section.

Scientist are struggling to come up with a widely accepted model that will explain the role of non-vertical strike-slip fault segments, crustal movement and deformation within Pacific –North American plate boundary. Multiple methods of analysis are being used; some of which are described below.

Plate tectonics is a theory explaining the structure of the Earth 's crust and many associated occurrences resulting in the interaction of tectonic plates that move slowly over the molten mantle. They move because of the force of gravity and the convection currents in the mantle. Convection currents occur when the deeper part of the mantle heats up, making the molten rock less dense, and floats up towards the top. From there, the magma cools down, making it denser, and it floats down towards the bottom. This whole process then starts all over again.