I have chosen to focus my attention on the North American Plate; after all I live in America, so it seems like a good plate to start with. Every time I swim in the ocean I imagine the Mid-Atlantic ridge or the Puerto Rican trench kilometers away. There are also a few unique hot spot features I would like to focus on as well.
The North American Plate is one of the larger tectonic plates on planet Earth. Almost the entire North American continent (excluding the lower west coast of California, Hawaii, and the Bahia Peninsula), Greenland, half of Iceland, and a small part of Russia all are located on this massive plate. It is boarded by numerous of other plates large and small. Starting with its northern neighbor and working in a clockwise circle, the plates are named as follows:
* Eurasian Plate
* African Plate
* South American Plate
* Caribbean Plate
* Cocos Plate
* Rivera Plate
* Pacific Plate
* Juan de Fuca Plate
* Okhotsk Plate
Tectonic plates are made up of oceanic crust and continental crust, combined with the upper part of the mantle they make up a layer called the lithosphere. Being such a large plate there is both oceanic and continental lithospheric crust in abundance on the North American Plate. There are also a lot of different examples of the processes that shape our planet located at where these plates meet; this is where we will focus a lot of our attention. After all, it is here we find out what causes the ground to shake beneath our feet, how mountains are built, why some spew out lava, and why some of the deepest parts of the oceans occur at these locations.
* Eurasian Plate
* African Plate
* South American Plate
* Caribbean Plate
* Cocos Plate
* Rivera Plate
* Pacific Plate
* Juan de Fuca Plate
* Okhotsk Plate
Tectonic plates are made up of oceanic crust and continental crust, combined with the upper part of the mantle they make up a layer called the lithosphere. Being such a large plate there is both oceanic and continental lithospheric crust in abundance on the North American Plate. There are also a lot of different examples of the processes that shape our planet located at where these plates meet; this is where we will focus a lot of our attention. After all, it is here we find out what causes the ground to shake beneath our feet, how mountains are built, why some spew out lava, and why some of the deepest parts of the oceans occur at these locations.
Below are links that will navigate you throughout this web site. Each page will focus on a certain type of boundary, or the hot spot features that are observable at different locations on Earth. The system is like one big recycling facility that is always pumping out new lithosphere and consuming the old. Divergent boundaries are areas where new lithosphere is created; thus, starting the recycling process. The older lithosphere for the most part is subducted, or consumed at convergent boundaries. Here the old lithosphere dives below an adjoining plate along with residual water, into the mantle. The addition of water causes partial melting to occur and is now ready to resurface as "new" crust far (millions of years) into the future. Transform boundaries do not help the "recycling" process except for acting as a boundary where different tectonic plates can move or slide past each other in opposite directions. Hot spots are unique features that do not occur at boundaries but play a important role for shaping our planet.