Course Title

IEQ-05 Earthquake Geology and Geoinformatics

by
Dr. J. D. Das
(Dept. of Earthquake Engineering, IIT Roorkee)

Plate Tectonics (Part II)

Plate tectonics: the new paradigm

™ Plate boundaries
• Types of plate boundaries
• Divergent or Constructive
• Convergent or Destructive
• Shear or Transform

Divergent Boundaries

™ Plate boundaries
• Types of plate boundaries
• Divergent plate boundaries (constructive margins)
• Two plates move apart
• Mantle material upwells to create new seafloor
• Ocean ridges and seafloor spreading
• Oceanic ridges develop along well-developed
boundaries
• Along ridges, seafloor spreading creates new
seafloor
Present active divergent boundary on continental part exists in the eastern part of the
Africa.

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Convergent (or destructive), Divergent (or constructive) and Transform or Shear type
plate boundaries.

At divergent boundaries new crust is created as the plates pull away from each other.
Oceans are born and grow wider where plates diverge or pull apart. As seen below, when
a diverging boundary occurs on land a 'rift', or separation will arise and over time that
mass of land will break apart into distinct land masses and the surrounding water will fill
the space between them.

Iceland offers scientists a natural laboratory for studying - on land - the processes that
occur along submerged parts of a divergent boundary. Iceland is splitting along the Mid-
Atlantic Ridge - a divergent boundary between the North American and Eurasian Plates.
As North America moves westward and Eurasia eastward, new crust is created on both
sides of the diverging boundary. While the creation of new crust adds mass to Iceland on
both sides of the boundary, it also creates a rift along the boundary. Iceland will
inevitably break apart into two separate land masses at some point in the future, as the
Atlantic waters eventually rush in to fill the widening and deepening space between.

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Birth of an Island: On November 14, 1963, in the early morning, several miles off the
southern coast of Iceland, fishermen noticed black smoke bubbling from the sea. By
evening, a ridge of hardening lava was noticed just below the waves. And by the
following morning, a tiny island had emerged (one square mile) above the surface.

Rift Valley

A new ocean basin is created when a tectonic plate carrying a continent literally splits
apart. In this process the heat from underlying magma wells up from deep within the
earth, weakening and stretching the overlying continental crust. The brittle crust then
fractures on each side of the stressed area, allowing sections to drop. The result is a
rugged terrestrial rift valley.
This early stage of ocean building is evident in several parts of today’s world, including
the Baikal region of southeastern Siberia known as the Basin, and the United States from
western Utah to eastern California, an area known to geologists as the Range. But the
most dramatic example of an emerging ocean basin in its infancy is the Great Rift Valley
of East Africa, stretching between Ethiopia and Tanzania. As the continent of Africa
breaks apart along a rift, a new plate (the Somali Plate) is taking shape. In time, the sea
will invade the gap created by the separation, thus forming a new ocean basin. The Red
Sea is a widening ocean basin located where the Arabian Peninsula was severed from
Africa long ago by the pulling apart of the African Plate and Arabian Plate. Africa is
literally coming apart at the seams.

As a young ocean widens and matures, the undersea rift develops a ridge of lava
mountains on the trailing edge of each plate. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge, for example, rises
where the American continents are separating from Europe and Africa. Other Mid-Ocean
Ridges include the East Pacific Rise, several hundred miles off the western coast of South
America, and the Indian Ridge, off the Eastern coast of Africa, south of India. Each of
these mid-ocean ridges first appeared as a terrestrial rift valley involved in the break-up
of some ancient land mass.

East African Rift

Africa's Great Rift Valley is a 6,000-mile crack (fissure) in the earth's crust, stretching
from Lebanon to Mozambique. One of its most dramatic sections slices through East
Africa, dividing Kenya into two segments. Geologists know that the Rift Valley was
formed by violent subterranean forces that tore apart the earth's crust. These forces
caused huge chunks of the crust to sink between parallel fault lines and force up molten
rock in volcanic eruptions. Evidence that this process, called rifting, is still in progress
comes from the many active and semi-active volcanoes, located along the Rift. Evidence
of volcanic activity along the rift is provided by the presence of numerous boiling hot
springs. Widening of the rift is 3.7±0.9 mm/year, and that most of this widening is
concentrated in the deepest, most youthful part of the rift zone (2.9±1 mm/year).

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 East African rift system also showing triple plate junction

There has been considerable discussion on this over the years. Some have ascribed rifting
to up-doming of the crust over a hot-spot; certainly parts of the E African rift system are
very elevated, compared with other sectors, suggesting that the doming reflects an
underlying hot low-density mantle plume. In other cases, geophysical models suggest the
asthenospheric mantle is rising to high levels beneath the rift. However it is also apparent
that rifting can take place without extensive uplift; in such cases it may be the convective
processes in the underlying asthenosphere which are causing the extension. To rift a
continent apart it needs the rifts associated with various possible thermal domes to link
together.

As continents drift slowly over hotspots the hotspots weaken the plate - like a blowtorch
impinging on the base - and these weakened zones become the sites of continental rifting.

Transform or Shear Boundaries

™ Plate boundaries
• Types of plate boundaries
• Transform fault boundaries
• Plates slide past one another
• No new crust is created
• No crust is destroyed
• Transform faults
• Most join two segments of a mid-ocean ridge
• At the time of formation, they roughly parallel the
direction of plate movement
• Aid the movement of oceanic crustal material

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Plates on either side of a transform boundary slide past each other without either late
being consumed and without a gap opening between the plates.
Recent analysis of satellite altimeter data has allowed scientists to use slight variations in
the elevation of the ocean surface to determine the topography of the seafloor.
Examination of oceanic ridges along the East Pacific Rise or Mid-Atlantic Ridge show
offsets along transform boundaries.

Transform or Shear Boundaries

The San Andreas Fault is a transform

boundary that separates the North American
and Pacific Plates. The smaller Juan de Fuca
plate lies between these two plates opposite
Oregon, Washington, northern California, and
part of British Columbia. The Pacific Plate
moves northwest relative to the North
American Plate. Los Angeles will migrate
toward San Francisco over the next several
million years.

San Andreas Fault

Land on the west side of the San Andreas Fault, including Los Angeles and San Diego, is
part of the Pacific Plate. San Francisco lies east of the fault and is on the North American
Plate. Western California is being slowly displaced to the northwest relative to the rest of
the state. It is not going to drop off into the ocean but it will eventually migrate along the
western boundary of the North American Plate, eventually colliding with Alaska millions
of years from now.

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Convergent Boundaries

™ Plate boundaries
• Types of plate boundaries
• Convergent plate boundaries (destructive margins)
• Plates collide, an ocean trench forms and lithosphere is
subducted into the mantle
• There are 3 types of convergent boundaries:
• 1) oceanic-continental,
• 2) oceanic-oceanic,
• 3) continental-continental

Convergent Boundaries – Oceanic-Continental

™ Plate boundaries
• Types of plate boundaries
• Convergent plate boundaries (destructive margins)
• Oceanic-continental convergence
• Denser oceanic slab sinks into the asthenosphere
• Pockets of magma develop and rise
• Continental volcanic arcs form
• Examples include the Andes, Cascades, and the
Sierra Nevadan system

Convergent Boundaries Oceanic-Oceanic

™ Plate boundaries
• Types of plate boundaries
• Convergent plate boundaries (destructive margins)
• Oceanic-oceanic convergence
• Two oceanic slabs converge and one descends
beneath the other
• Often forms volcanoes on the ocean floor
• Volcanic island arcs forms as volcanoes emerge
from the sea
• Examples include the Aleutian, Mariana, and Tonga
islands

Convergent Boundaries – Continental-Continental

™ Plate boundaries
• Types of plate boundaries
• Convergent plate boundaries (destructive margins)
• Continental-continental convergence
• When subducting plates contain continental
material, two continents collide
• Can produce new mountain ranges such as the
Himalayas

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 The collision of India and Asia produced the Himalayas (before)

The collision of India and Asia produced the Himalayas (after)

The Himalayas: Two continents collide

Among the most dramatic and visible creations of plate-tectonic forces are the lofty Himalayas, which
stretch 2,500 km (100 to 400 km wide) along the border between India and Tibet. This immense mountain
range began to form between 40 and 50 million years ago, when two large landmasses, India and Eurasia,
driven by plate movement, collided. Because both these continental landmasses have about the same rock
density, one plate could not be subducted under the other. The pressure of the impinging plates could only
be relieved by thrusting skyward, contorting the collision zone, and forming the jagged Himalayan peaks.
About 225 million years ago, India was a large island still situated off the Australian coast, and a vast
ocean (called Tethys Sea) separated India from the Asian continent. When Pangaea broke apart about 200
million years ago, India began to forge northward. By studying the history -- and ultimately the closing-- of
the Tethys, scientists have reconstructed India's northward journey. About 80 million years ago, India was
located roughly 6,400 km south of the Asian continent, moving northward at a rate of about 9 m a century.
When India rammed into Asia about 40 to 50 million years ago, its northward advance slowed by about
half. The collision and associated decrease in the rate of plate movement are interpreted to mark the
beginning of the rapid uplift of the Himalayas.

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The 6,000-km-plus journey of the India landmass (Indian Plate) before its collision with
Asia (Eurasian Plate) about 40 to 50 million years ago (see text). India was once situated
well south of the Equator, near the continent of Australia.

The Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau to the north have risen very rapidly. In just 50
million years, peaks such as Mt. Everest have risen to heights of more than 9 km. The
impinging of the two landmasses has yet to end. The Himalayas continue to rise more
than 1 cm a year -- a growth rate of 10 km in a million years! If that is so, why aren't the
Himalayas even higher? Scientists believe that the Eurasian Plate may now be stretching
out rather than thrusting up, and such stretching would result in some subsidence due to
gravity.

At present, the movement of India continues to put enormous pressure on the Asian
continent, and Tibet in turn presses on the landmass to the north that is hemming it in.
The net effect of plate-tectonics forces acting on this geologically complicated region is
to squeeze parts of Asia eastward toward the Pacific Ocean. One serious consequence of
these processes is a deadly "domino" effect: tremendous stresses build up within the
Earth's crust, which are relieved periodically by earthquakes along the numerous faults
that scar the landscape. Some of the world's most destructive earthquakes in history are
related to continuing tectonic processes that began some 50 million years ago when the
Indian and Eurasian continents first met.

Various models have been proposed for the evolution of the Himalaya. Of these, two
models namely, Steady State Model and the Evolutionary model have gained
considerable importance. Steady state model postulates that the active low angle
contemporary thrusts i.e. MCT and MBT converge with the plane of detachment, which

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marks the interface between the subducting Indian slab and overlying sedimentary
wedge. Whereas, the basement thrust in this model represents that part of shallow dipping
detachment surface where the MCT merges and hence spatially the basement thrust is
located just north of MCT. According to this model the great Himalayan earthquakes are
related to the detachment surface.

The evolutionary model postulates that zone of plate convergence has progressively
shifted south by formation of intra crustal thrusts and hypothesizes that the MBT is the
most active tectonic surface and that the seismicity is concentrated in a 50 km wide zone
between the map trace of MBT and MCT. This model suggests that the rupture of Great
Himalayan earthquakes may have started in the interplate thrust zone, which propagated
south along the detachment to the MBT and further south to the subsidiary blind thrusts
making MBT the most active thrust rooted in the detachment. Both these models suggest
that the contemporary deformation styles in the Himalayas are guided by the under
thrusting of the Indian thrust along the detachment surface.

Evolutionary Model : After Ni and Barazangi (1984)

Steady-state model : After Seeber and Armbruster (1981). All the

elements in this model are active simultaneously and subduction
proceeds without fundamental changes in the structure