Search Wikipedia Create account

We’ve made a few changes to your reading experience.

These improvements will make Wikipedia more welcoming and easier to use.

Alpide belt 31 languages

Article Talk Read Edit View history

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Alpide" redirects here. Not to be confused with Alpine.

The Alpide belt or Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt,[1] or more recently and rarely the Tethyan
Alpide belt
orogenic belt, is a seismic and orogenic belt that includes an array of mountain ranges extending for
Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt
more than 15,000 kilometres (9,300 mi) along the southern margin of Eurasia, stretching from Java and
Sumatra, through the Indochinese Peninsula, the Himalayas and Transhimalayas, the mountains of
Iran, Caucasus, Anatolia, the Mediterranean, and out into the Atlantic.[2] It includes, from west to east,
the major ranges of the Atlas Mountains, the Alps, the Caucasus Mountains, Alborz, Hindu Kush,
Karakoram, and the Himalayas. It is the second most seismically active region in the world, after the
circum-Pacific belt (the Ring of Fire), with 17% of the world's largest earthquakes.[2]

The belt is the result of Mesozoic-to-Cenozoic-to-recent closure of the Tethys Ocean and process of
collision between the northward-moving African, Arabian, and Indian Plates with the Eurasian Plate.[1]
Each collision results in a convergent boundary, a topic covered in plate tectonics. The approximate
alignment of so many convergent boundaries trending east to west, first noticed by the Austrian
geologist Eduard Suess, suggests that once many plates were one plate, and the collision formed one
Approximate extent of the Alpide orogenic system.
subduction zone, which was oceanic, subducting the floor of Tethys. Suess called the single continent
Gondwana, after some rock formations in India, then part of the supercontinent of Gondwana, which Highest point

had earlier divided from another supercontinent, Laurasia, and was now pushing its way back. Eurasia Peak Mount Everest
descends from Laurasia, the Laurentia part having split away to the west to form the Atlantics. As Elevation 8,848.86 m (29,031.7 ft)
Tethys closed, Gondwana pushed up ranges on the southern margin of Eurasia. Dimensions
Length 15,000 km (9,300 mi) E–W on the west,
Brief history of the concept ​[ edit ] N–S on the east
Naming
The Alpide belt is a concept from modern historical geology, the study in geologic time of the events
Etymology Alpide is a neologism of Eduard Suess,
that shaped the surface of the Earth.[3] The topic began suddenly in the mid-19th century with the
from Alp-, "the Alps," and -ide, an
evolutionary biologists. The early historical geologists, such as Charles Darwin and Charles Lyell, innovated suffix expanding "Alps" to
arranged fossils and layers of sedimentary rock containing them into time periods, of which the other ranges being grouped with it. The
framework remains. The late 19th century was a period of synthesis, in which geologists attempted to term "belt" signifies that the Alpides,
wherever they may be, are an
combine all the detail into the big picture. The first of his type, Eduard Suess, used the term
extended zone.
"comparative orography" to refer to his method of comparing mountain ranges, parallel to "comparative
Geography
anatomy" and "comparative philology.[4] His work preceded plate tectonics and continental drift. This
Mesozoic Southern Eurasia, northern Africa,
pre-tectonic phase lasted until about 1950, when the drift theory won the field just as suddenly as had
oceanic central Asian subcontinent, southeast
the evolutionist. The concepts and language of the comparative graphists were kept with some platform Asia
modification, but were explained in new ways. Geology
Formed by compressive forces at aligned
Suess's subsidence theory ​[ edit ]
convergent plate boundaries
The author of the concept of a trans-Eurasian zone of subsidence, which he called Tethys, was Eduard Orogeny If "Alpide" is taken in Kober's sense to
Suess. He knew it had been a subsidence because it expressed deposits of the Mesozoic, now mean the last and current of a
collective group of contemporaneous
indurated into layers and raised into highlands by compressional force.[5] Suess had discovered the
ridges over the entire Tethyan region,
zone during his early work on the Alps. He spent the better part of his career following the zone in then "Alpine orogeny" is used
detail, which he assembled in one ongoing work, das Antlitz der Erde, "The Face of the Earth." Like a collectively of all the orogenies required
human face, the Earth's face has lineaments. Suess's topic was the definition and classification of the to create the Alpides, a definition that is

lineaments of this zone, which he traced from one end of Eurasia to the other, ending on the east with far from the original meanings of Alpide
and Alpine, representing a specialized
the Malay Peninsula.
geologic usage.
Suess looked, as did all geologists, at the strata and content of sedimentary rock, deposited as Mountain Folded mountain ranges
sediment in the oceanic basins, indurated under the pressure of the depths, and raised later under type
horizontal pressure into folds of mountain chains. What he added to the field is the study of what he
called the “trend-lines” or directions of mountains chains. These were to be discovered by examining their strikes, or intersections with the surface. He
soon discovered what are known today as convergent plate borders, are chains of mountains raised by the compression or subduction of one plate under
another, but knowledge was not in such a state that he could recognize them as that. He concerned himself instead with the patterns.

Main ranges (from west to east) ​[ edit ]

Cantabrian Mountains (incl. the Basque Mountains), Sistema Central, Sistema Ibérico, Pyrenees, Alps, Carpathians, Balkan Mountains (Balkanides),
Rila-Rhodope massifs, Thracian Sea islands, Crimean Mountains – entirely in Europe
Atlas and Rif Mountains in Northern Africa, Baetic System (Sierra Nevada and Balearic Islands), Apennine Mountains, Dinaric Alps, Pindus
(Hellenides), and Mount Ida;
Caucasus Mountains (on the limits between Asia and Europe), Kopet Mountains, Pamir, Alay Mountains, Tian Shan, Altai Mountains, Sayan Mountains;
Pontic Mountains, Armenian Highlands, Alborz, Hindu Kush, Kunlun Mountains, Hengduan Mountains, Annamite Range, Titiwangsa Mountains, Barisan
Mountains – entirely in Asia;
Taurus Mountains, Troodos Mountains, Zagros Mountains, Makran Highland, Sulaiman Mountains, Karakoram, Himalayas, Transhimalaya, Patkai, Chin
Hills, Arakan Mountains, Andaman and Nicobar Islands – entirely in Asia.

Indonesia lies between the Pacific Ring of Fire along the northeastern islands adjacent to and including New Guinea and the Alpide belt along the south
and west from Sumatra, Java and the Lesser Sunda Islands (Bali, Flores, and Timor). The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake just off the coast of Sumatra was
located within the Alpide belt.

Citations ​[ edit ]

1. ^ a b K.M. Storetvedt, K. M., The Tethys Sea and the Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt; mega-elements in a new global tectonic system, Physics of the Earth and
Planetary Interiors, Volume 62, Issues 1–2, 1990, Pages 141–184 Abstract
2. ^ a b "Where do earthquakes occur?" . USGS. Archived from the original on 5 August 2014. Retrieved 8 March 2015.
3. ^ Suess 1904, p. 594 "In human affairs as in the physical world the present is only a transverse section; we cannot see the future which lies beyond, but we may gain
instruction from the past. Thus the history of the earth is of fundamental importance in the description of the earth."
4. ^ Suess 1904, p. 594 "A general comparative orography, drawn from the existing store of observations, has not yet been created, and he who endeavours step by
step to organize the elements of such a synthesis must be content if he finds that the structure he has raised is open to completion and correction,..."
5. ^ Suess 1908, p. 19 "Gondwana-land is bounded on the north by a broad zone of marine deposits of Mesozoic age....It must be regarded in its entirety as the relic of
a sea which once extended across the existing continent of Asia."

General and cited references ​[ edit ]

Suess, Eduard (1904). Sollas, W. J. (ed.). The Face of the Earth [das Antlitz der Erde]. Vol. I. Translated by Sollas, Hertha B. C. Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
Suess, Eduard (1908). Sollas, W. J. (ed.). The Face of the Earth [das Antlitz der Erde]. Vol. III. Translated by Sollas, Hertha B. C. (Revised ed.).
Oxford: Clarendon Press.

External links ​[ edit ]

Historic Earthquakes & Earthquake Statistics – USGS

Wikimedia Commons has
"Ring of Fire", Plate Tectonics, Sea-Floor Spreading, Subduction Zones, "Hot Spots" – USGS media related to Alpide belt.

This tectonics article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This Europe mountain, mountain range, or peak related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This Asia mountain, mountain range, or peak related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

This Africa mountain, mountain range, or peak related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Categories: Geographic areas of seismological interest Plate tectonics Volcanism Belt regions Tectonics stubs Europe mountain stubs
Asia mountain stubs Africa mountain stubs

This page was last edited on 9 December 2022, at 22:53 (UTC).

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit
organization.

Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers Contact Wikipedia Mobile view Developers Statistics Cookie statement