China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Distribution of rocks at and below the surface
Published in A.C. McLean, C. D. Gribble, Geology for Civil Engineers, 2017
More important changes may occur because parts of the rigid outer shell of the Earth (the lithosphere) move on top of the asthenosphere. The study of the movement of these rigid shell parts (or plates) is known as plate tectonics. The essential concept of plate tectonics is that the entire surface of the Earth is composed of a series of rigid, undeformable, thin (<150 km thick) plates, and seven major plates cover most of the Earth’s surface (Fig. 4.30a), namely the Pacific Plate, the African Plate, the Indian Plate, the Eurasian Plate, the Antarctic Plate, the North and South American Plate, and the Nazca Plate. Many smaller plates exist in addition to these, such as the Caribbean Plate, which is sited at the Caribbean Sea. The plates are continuously in motion, both in relation to each other and to the Earth’s axis of rotation.
Introduction
Published in Fang Lin Luo, Hong Ye, Renewable Energy Systems, 2013
The mechanically rigid outer layer of the Earth, the lithosphere, is broken into pieces called tectonic plates. There are seven primary plates; these seven plates comprise the bulk of the seven continents and the Pacific Ocean: African plateAntarctic plateEurasian plateIndo–Australian plateNorth American platePacific plateSouth American plate
Introduction
Published in Ranadhir Mukhopadhyay, Victor J. Loveson, Sridhar D. Iyer, P.K. Sudarsan, Blue Economy of the Indian Ocean, 2020
Ranadhir Mukhopadhyay, Victor J. Loveson, Sridhar D. Iyer, P.K. Sudarsan
The active spreading centers in the Indian Ocean, the youngest of all oceans, are represented by mid-ocean ridges that are a part of a worldwide system of underwater mountain chains. The most prominent landmark in this ocean is the inverted Y junction (also known as the Indian Ocean triple junction, IOTJ), where Indo-Australian, African, and Antarctic plates meet. The Central Indian Ridge (including the Carlsberg Ridge) separates the Indo-Australian Plate from the African Plate, while the Southwest Indian Ridge separates the African Plate from the Antarctic Plate.
Cambrian ocean floor crust preserved in the Takaka Terrane, New Zealand
Published in New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics, 2023
Carsten Münker, Frank Wombacher, Christopher Siebert
Highly controversial topics regarding the Cambrian sequence of the Takaka Terrane and its Australian-Antarctic correlatives are the exact juxtaposition of the different fragments and the subduction polarities beneath the different arc sequences. While earlier models based on Cambrian rocks from Tasmania (e.g. Crawford and Berry 1992; Münker and Crawford 2000) argued for subduction of the Australian-Antarctic Plate beneath the Pacific Plate, most other models based on arc sequences in Australia, Antarctica and New Zealand (e.g. Münker and Crawford 2000; Squire et al. 2006; Glen and Cooper 2021) now argue for subduction of the Pacific Plate beneath the Australian-Antarctic Plate, possibly also along parallel subduction systems separated by marginal back-arc basins (e.g. Bradshaw et al. 2009; Glen and Cooper 2021). These considerations show that the characterisation of coupled arc/back-arc systems in Cambrian can help our understanding of the tectono-magmatic evolution of the Cambrian margin of southeast Gondwana, the exact juxtaposition of the different Cambrian terranes, and the early history of the Pacific margin.