Please respond to both POST1: and POST2: in at least 200 words and APA cited reference.
Required
- Chapter 1 Introduction to Science in An introduction to geology. Salt Lake Community College. Open Educational Resource
- Chapter 2 Plate Tectonics in An introduction to geology. Salt Lake Community College. Open Educational Resource
- Chapter 4 Igneous Processes and Volcanoes (Section 4.5 only) in An introduction to geology. Salt Lake Community College. Open Educational Resource
- Chapter 8 Earth History in An introduction to geology. Salt Lake Community College. Open Educational Resource
Recommended
- Frebel, A., & Beers, T. C. (2018). The formation of the heaviest elements. arXiv preprint arXiv:1801.01190. Retrieved from https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.3815
- Kious, W. J., & Tilling, R. I. (1994). This dynamic Earth: The story of plate tectonics. United States Geological Survey.
POST1:
Great post on the Indian Plate! It has had quite a dramatic geologic history. Has the Indian subcontinent always been attached to Asia? What kind of plate boundary currently connects the Eurasian Plate to the Indian Plate? How are the Himalayas a result of that plate interaction? Why aren’t there any volcanoes in the Himalayas (unlike the Andes, a mountain chain that includes many active volcanoes)?
POST2:
I chose to do the African plate. The African Plate is a major tectonic plate straddling the equator as well as the prime meridian. It includes much of the continent of Africa, as well as oceanic crust which lies between the continent and various surrounding ocean ridges.
The western edge of the African Plate is a divergent boundary with the North American Plate to the north and the South American Plate to the south which forms the central and southern part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The African Plate is bounded on the northeast by the Arabian Plate, the southeast by the Somali Plate, the north by the Eurasian Plate, the Aegean Sea Plate, and the Anatolian Plate, and on the south by the Antarctic Plate.
The African Plate includes several cratons, stable blocks of old crust with deep roots in the subcontinental lithospheric mantle, and less stable terranes, which came together to form the African continent during the assembly of the supercontinent Pangea around 250 million years ago. The cratons are, from south to north, the Kalahari Craton, Congo Craton, Tanzania Craton and West African Craton. The cratons were widely separated in the past, but came together during the Pan-African orogeny and stayed together when Gondwana split up. The cratons are connected by orogenic belts, regions of highly deformed rock where the tectonic plates have engaged. The Saharan Metacraton has been tentatively identified as the remains of a craton that has become detached from the subcontinental lithospheric mantle, but alternatively may consist of a collection of unrelated crustal fragments swept together during the Pan-African orogeny.
In some areas, the cratons are covered by sedimentary basins, such as the Tindouf Basin, Taoudeni Basin and Congo Basin, where the underlying archaic crust is overlaid by more recent Neoproterozoic sediments. The plate includes shear zones such as the Central African Shear Zone (CASZ) where, in the past, two sections of the crust were moving in opposite directions, and rifts such as the Anza Trough where the crust was pulled apart, and the resulting depression filled with more modern sediment.
The African Plate is rifting in the eastern interior of the African continent along the East African Rift. This rift zone separates the African Plate to the west from the Somali Plate to the east. One hypothesis proposes the existence of a mantle plume beneath the Afar region, whereas an opposing hypothesis asserts that the rifting is merely a zone of maximum weakness where the African Plate is deforming as plates to its east are moving rapidly northward.
The African Plate’s speed is estimated at around 2.15 cm (0.85 in) per year. It has been moving over the past 100 million years or so in a general northeast direction. This is drawing it closer to the Eurasian Plate, causing subduction where oceanic crust is converging with continental crust (e.g. portions of the central and eastern Mediterranean). In the western Mediterranean, the relative motions of the Eurasian and African plates produce a combination of lateral and compressive forces, concentrated in a zone known as the Azores–Gibraltar Fault Zone. Along its northeast margin, the African Plate is bounded by the Red Sea Rift where the Arabian Plate is moving away from the African Plate.
The New England hotspot in the Atlantic Ocean has probably created a short line of mid- to late-Tertiary age seamounts on the African Plate but appears to be currently inactive.
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