List of plate tectonics topics

This is a list of articles related to plate tectonics and tectonic plates.

Individual plates

  • List of tectonic plates – A list of the relatively moving sections of the lithosphere of the Earth
  • African Plate – Tectonic plate underlying Africa west of the East African Rift
  • Anatolian Plate – A continental tectonic plate comprising most of the Anatolia (Asia Minor) peninsula
  • Antarctic Plate – A tectonic plate containing the continent of Antarctica and extending outward under the surrounding oceans
  • Arabian Plate – A tectonic plate consisting mostly of the Arabian Peninsula, extending northward to the Levant
  • Burma Plate – A minor tectonic plate in Southeast Asia
  • Cocos Plate – A young oceanic tectonic plate beneath the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Central America
  • Eurasian Plate – A tectonic plate which includes most of the continent of Eurasia
  • Explorer Plate – An oceanic tectonic plate beneath the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Vancouver Island, Canada
  • Farallon Plate – An ancient oceanic plate that has mostly subducted under the west coast of the North American Plate
  • Gorda Plate – One of the northern remnants of the Farallon Plate
  • Indian Plate – A major tectonic plate once part of the supercontinent Gondwana
  • Juan de Fuca Plate – A small tectonic plate in the western North Pacific
  • Halmahera Plate – A small tectonic plate in the Molucca Sea
  • Indo-Australian Plate – A major tectonic plate formed by the fusion of the Indian and Australian plates
  • Pacific Plate – An oceanic tectonic plate under the Pacific Ocean
  • Molucca Sea Plate – A small fully subducted tectonic plate
  • Nazca Plate – Oceanic tectonic plate in the eastern Pacific Ocean basin
  • North American Plate – Large tectonic plate including most of North America, Greenland and a bit of Siberia
  • Philippine Sea Plate – An oceanic tectonic plate to the east of the Philippines
  • South American Plate – A major tectonic plate which includes most of South America and a large part of the south Atlantic
  • Sunda Plate – A minor tectonic plate including most of Southeast Asia

Paleocontinents

  • Gondwana – Neoproterozoic to Carboniferous supercontinent
  • Laurasia – Northern supercontinent that formed part of the Pangaea supercontinent
  • Pangaea – Supercontinent from the late Paleozoic to early Mesozoic eras
  • Panthalassa – Prehistoric superocean that surrounded Pangaea
  • Rodinia – Hypothetical neoproterozoic supercontinent from between about a billion to about three quarters of a billion years ago
  • Terrane – Fragment of crustal material formed on, or broken off from, one tectonic plate and accreted or "sutured" to crust lying on another plate

Specific areas

  • Alpine Fault – A right-lateral strike-slip fault, that runs almost the entire length of New Zealand's South Island.
  • Benham Rise, also known as Benham Plateau
  • East African Rift – An active continental rift zone in East Africa
  • Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain – A mostly undersea mountain range in the Pacific Ocean that reaches above sea level in Hawaii.
  • Geology of the Alps – The formation and structure of the European Alps
  • Indian subcontinent – Peninsular region in south-central Asia south of the Himalayas
  • Mariana Trench – The deepest part of Earth's oceans, where the Pacific Plate is subducted under the Mariana Plate
  • Mid-Atlantic Ridge – A divergent tectonic plate boundary that in the North Atlantic separates the Eurasian and North American plates, and in the South Atlantic separates the African and South American plates
  • Mohorovičić discontinuity – Boundary between the Earth's crust and the mantle
  • Molucca Sea Collision Zone – A region of complex tectonic activity in Indonesia
  • Pacific-Antarctic Ridge – A divergent tectonic plate boundary located on the seafloor of the South Pacific Ocean, separating the Pacific Plate from the Antarctic Plate
  • Philippine Mobile Belt – Complex portion of the tectonic boundary between the Eurasian Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate, comprising most of the country of the Philippines
  • San Andreas Fault – A continental transform fault through California between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate
  • Tethys Ocean, also known as Tethys Sea – Mesozoic ocean between Gondwana and Laurasia

Earthquakes

Other plate tectonics topics

  • Asthenosphere – The highly viscous, mechanically weak and ductile region of the Earth's upper mantle
  • Back-arc basin – Submarine features associated with island arcs and subduction zones
  • Continent – Very large landmass identified by convention
  • Continental drift – The movement of the Earth's continents relative to each other
  • Convergent boundary – Region of active deformation between colliding lithospheric plates
  • Crust – The outermost solid shell of a rocky planet, dwarf planet, or natural satellite
  • Divergent boundary – Linear feature that exists between two tectonic plates that are moving away from each other
  • Fault (geology) – Fracture or discontinuity in rock across which there has been displacement
  • Island arc – Arc-shaped archipelago usually along a subduction zone
  • Isostasy – State of gravitational equilibrium between Earth's crust and mantle
  • List of tectonic plate interactions – Definitions and examples of the interactions between the relatively mobile sections of the lithosphere
  • Mantle – The part of the interior of a planet between the crust and the core
  • Mountain – A large landform that rises fairly steeply above the surrounding land over a limited area
  • Obduction – The overthrusting of oceanic lithosphere onto continental lithosphere at a convergent plate boundary
  • Mid-ocean ridge, also known as Oceanic ridge – An underwater mountain system formed by plate tectonic spreading
  • Oceanic trench – Long and narrow depressions of the sea floor
  • Orogeny – The formation of mountain ranges
  • Paleoclimatology – The study of changes in climate taken on the scale of the entire history of Earth
  • Paleomap – Map of continents and mountain ranges in the past based on plate reconstructions
  • Passive margin – The transition between oceanic and continental lithosphere that is not an active plate margin
  • Ridge push – A proposed driving force for tectonic plate motion as the result of the lithosphere sliding down the raised asthenosphere below mid-ocean ridges
  • Rift – A linear zone where the Earth's crust is being pulled apart, and is an example of extensional tectonics
  • Seafloor spreading – A process at mid-ocean ridges, where new oceanic crust is formed through volcanic activity and then gradually moves away from the ridge
  • Seamount – A mountain rising from the ocean seafloor that does not reach to the water's surface
  • Subduction – A geological process at convergent tectonic plate boundaries where one plate moves under the other
  • Supercontinent – Landmass comprising more than one continental core, or craton
  • Tectonic uplift – The portion of the total geologic uplift of the mean earth surface that is not attributable to an isostatic response to unloading
  • Transform fault, also known as Transform boundary – A plate boundary where the motion is predominantly horizontal
  • Volcano – A rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.