The Forever Moving Land Essay

II: Plate tectonics shows the features and movement of the Earth. The theory of plate tectonics says that the outer shell of the earth is broken down into pieces often called plates (Korenaga). These plates hover over the mantle creating movement (Marshak). With plate tectonics you can determine the earth’s features without actually seeing it.

As a tectonic plate slides into the mantle, the heat releases fluids trapped in the plate. Seawater and carbon dioxide, rise into the upper plate and can partially melt the overlying crust, forming magma. And magma most likely means volcanoes are around.

The new volcanic material welling up into the void, which forms a ribbon of new materials and breaks down its center gradually, when the plates move apart from the axis of the mid-oceanic ridge system. Therefore, every separating plate accretes one half a ribbon of new lithosphere, and, thus, a new surface is added (Pitman, W.C, 2007). The process is continuous, and separation is always happening at the

As the crust moves away from the volcanoes and cools and becomes less dense and breaks up.

The Earth’s outer crust is made up many tectonic plates that move over the surface of the planet. When the plates come collide, volcanoes will form sometime (National Ocean Service). Volcanoes can also form in the middle of a plate, where magma rises upward until it erupts on the sea floor, at what is called a “hot spot” (National Ocean Service). A hot spot is a plume of magma or molten rock that rises from within the Earth then reaches the surface forming underwater volcanoes which may grow tall enough to

Some rock’s in the Earth’s interior that are solid, are so hot that, if the pressure on these were released, or they are convected into a lower pressure zone, they could begin to melt

Mount Vesuvius, a volcano located on Italy’s western coastline, overlooking the Bay of Naples creates part of the Campanian volcanic arc along with other nearby volcanoes. The Campanian arc, a line of volcanoes that formed over a subduction zone, was created by the merging of the African and Eurasian plates. This subduction zone covers the entire length of the Italian peninsula, and is the source for other volcanoes like Mount Etna, the Phlegraean Fields (Campi Flegrei), Vulcano, and Stromboli (Ball, n.p.). A gap in the African plate, known as a “slab window”, allowed heat to raise from the Earth’s mantle and melt the plate causing violent eruptions (Bagley, n.p.).

These plates, along with several smaller ones, are called the lithospheric plates, because they are part of the lithosphere, which is the outermost part of the Earth's shell. . The plate boundaries can be three different types: divergent, transform or subduction. Divergent boundaries occur when the plates are moving away from each other. Transform boundaries are where the plates slide against each other with a back and forth motion. Subduction boundaries occur when an oceanic plate moves under a continental plate. This movement causes volcanic activity and earthquakes. (This boundary is also called convergent.) This activity is always happening, because the plates are constantly in

The process of the formation of igneous rocks begin all the way down in the Earth's mantle. The mantle consisted of hot magma that is constantly moving due to the convection currents. Convection is the heat transfer of liquid and gases .As the bottom of the mantle begin to heat up, the magma rises to the top because it becomes less dense. Once it reaches the top it cools off and becomes more dense and fall back to the bottom and the cycle of convection begin again.

A subduction zone is a region on the crust of the earth where two tectonics plate meet one another. The area where the two plates meet is called a plate boundary. When two plates meet at a subduction zone, they converge towards each other, and one these tectonic plates come into contact with each other, one bends and slides underneath another, resulting in one curving down to the mantle. In this circumstance when subduction is taking place the denser plate is the one that sinks beneath the other. On the earth’s surface there are two main types of crust; the oceanic and the continental. The continental isn’t as dense as the oceanic making it slide above while the oceanic subducts down, in a convection motion to recycle itself then be remade when it pushes itself up. The place the denser medium goes towards is the mantle that consists of molten rock and it accounts to 84% of earths volume. Subduction only takes effect when two plates of different density collide, for if two continental crusts converge and push together neither will subduct, so it will be like a car crash where the two mediums smash into each other but neither subducts, as an example of this event look to the Himalayas that were

the Earth at tremendous velocities causing them to join the molten and create a crust

The pieces that make up the crust and mantle are called tectonic plates. They’re always slowly moving, and they can slide past each other or even bump into one another. The edges of these pieces, or plates, are called plate boundaries. They have lots of faults, which are the surfaces where they slip past each other, and these faults are where most earthquakes happen.

The topic of discussion will be to explain, how an accretionary wedge forms. Sediments and oceanic crust contains large amounts of water, which are carried to depths by a subducting plate. At this depth, the water that is driven from the voids in the rocks, become extremely hot, which leads to partial melting. Partial melting is molten material mixed with mantle rock. This hot molten mixture rises toward the surface, ascending through the crust and gives rise to a volcanic eruption. Much of this eruption never reaches the surface and hardens at depth into a thick like crust. This thickened molten crust, produced in part by volcanic activity, associated with subduction of oceanic lithosphere, is called a continental volcanic arc. During the

The researchers concluded this process is likely what causes earthquakes in this otherwise stable region: when the pieces of the mantle break off, the plate above them becomes thinner and more prone to slip along ancient fault lines. Typically, the thicker the plate, the stronger it is, and the less likely to produce

Heat emission from subduction zones can take many forms, such as volcanoes, geysers and hot springs. When lateral plate movement induced gaps occur between plates, collisions occur between other plates. This results in partial plate destruction. This causes mass amounts of heat to be produced due to frictional forces and the rise of magma from the mantle through propagating lithosphere fractures and thermal plumes sometimes resulting in volcanism. During plate movement, continental plates are constantly being consumed and produced changing plate boundaries.