What kind of boundary is the pacific plate

On average, the Pacific Plate moves at a rate of 5 to 10 centimeters per year. However, the Pacific Plate, Cocos Plate, Nazca Plate, and Antarctic Plate move more than 10 centimeters which is the fastest movement rate of all plate tectonics.

The Pacific Plate contains all the plate tectonic boundary types along its boundary. In other words, it shares convergent, divergent, and transform borders with other plates. The southern edge is a divergent plate boundary with the Antarctic Plate.

As these two plates pull apart from each other, it forms new oceanic crust. Already mentioned, the Pacific Ring of Fire has the most active chains of volcanoes in the world. This is because tectonic plates collide and sink at these zones of subduction convergent plate boundaries. For example, the Queen Charlotte Fault connects the north end of the Juan de Fuca Ridge, starting at the north end of Vancouver Island, to the Aleutian subduction zone.

The boundary between the two plates is the Nootka Fault, which is the location of frequent small-to-medium earthquakes roughly up to magnitude 5 , as depicted by the red stars. Explain why the Nootka Fault is a transform fault, and show the relative sense of motion along the fault with two small arrows.

See Appendix 3 for Exercise As originally described by Wegener in , the present continents were once all part of a supercontinent, which he termed Pangea meaning all land. More recent studies of continental matchups and the magnetic ages of ocean-floor rocks have enabled us to reconstruct the history of the break-up of Pangea. During the same period, the Atlantic Ocean began to open up between northern Africa and North America, and India broke away from Antarctica.

To see the timing of these processes for yourself, go to time lapse of Continental Movements. Within the past few million years, rifting has taken place in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, and also within the Gulf of California.

Over the next 50 million years, it is likely that there will be full development of the east African rift and creation of new ocean floor. Eventually Africa will split apart. There will also be continued northerly movement of Australia and Indonesia.

The western part of California including Los Angeles and part of San Francisco will split away from the rest of North America, and eventually sail right by the west coast of Vancouver Island, en route to Alaska. 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.

If this continues without changing for another couple hundred million years, we will be back to where we started, with one supercontinent. Pangea, which existed from about to Ma, was not the first supercontinent. It was preceded by Pannotia to Ma , by Rodinia 1, to Ma , and by others before that.

In , Tuzo Wilson proposed that there has been a continuous series of cycles of continental rifting and collision; that is, break-up of supercontinents, drifting, collision, and formation of other supercontinents.

The eastern margins of North and South America and the western margins of Europe and Africa are called passive margins because there is no subduction taking place along them. This situation may not continue for too much longer, however. As the Atlantic Ocean floor gets weighed down around its margins by great thickness of continental sediments i. A subduction zone will develop, and the oceanic plate will begin to descend under the continent. Once this happens, the continents will no longer continue to move apart because the spreading at the mid-Atlantic ridge will be taken up by subduction.

If spreading along the mid-Atlantic ridge continues to be slower than spreading within the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean will start to close up, and eventually in a million years or more North and South America will collide with Europe and Africa.

There is strong evidence around the margins of the Atlantic Ocean that this process has taken place before. The roots of ancient mountain belts, which are present along the eastern margin of North America, the western margin of Europe, and the northwestern margin of Africa, show that these land masses once collided with each other to form a mountain chain, possibly as big as the Himalayas.

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. When rifting of Pangea started at approximately Ma, the fissuring was along a different line from the line of the earlier collision.

This is why some of the mountain chains formed during the earlier collision can be traced from Europe to North America and from Europe to Africa. That the Atlantic Ocean rift may have occurred in approximately the same place during two separate events several hundred million years apart is probably no coincidence. 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 This map shows the boundaries between the major plates.

Without referring to the plate map in Figure This is the boundary between the Australian plate and the Pacific plate. The Hikurangi tectonic plate boundary is a convergent boundary.

This means that the Australian and Pacific plates are pushing against each other. There are two kinds of plates — oceanic and continental plates. When oceanic and continental plates meet, the denser oceanic plate moves under the less dense continental plate.

The Australian plate is a continental plate and the Pacific plate is an oceanic plate. At this boundary, the Pacific plate is slowly moving under the Australian plate. This process is called subduction. Subduction zones are a type of fault and are responsible for the largest and most powerful earthquakes and tsunamis in the world.