Plate Tectonics

Evidence

Theory

Types of Plate Boundaries

Tony K. Hariadi
What defines “Plate Tectonics?”

• Earth’s surface is made up of

rigid plates
• Plates do not deform internally;
deformation is at boundaries
 Plate Tectonics discovery
Early 1500's mapping coast of S America

Francis Bacon: Match with Africa

 1912: Alfred Wegener
First Proposed that Plates Move
Continental
Drift

Not believed
•  Rates Too Fast
• Continents "sail" through oceans??? NOT
New Technologies after WWII
• Sonar
• Nuclear monitoring
• Magnetometers

led to mid-1960's:
Plate Tectonic Revolution
 Sonar
• maps of sea floor
The Sea Floor
 Nuclear Monitoring
• global earthquake
catalogs
Earthquakes 30 days
 Magnetometers
• ages of sea floor
– Magnetic Reversals
Rock Magnetism
• Some minerals magnetize

Rocks record field when they form

Observe: Magnetic Polarity “Flips”

every 0.2 – 50 Ma
(Ma = million years)
Pattern of Reversals is distinct

N
normal
N
S reversed
S
N normal
lavas
 Vine-Mathews (1963):
Magnetic “stripes” on sea floor

M
Crust
Forms at Ridge, cools, freezes Mag. Field
Magnetic Field Flips "recorded"
... leaving magnetic "stripes" on sea floor
 Age of Oceans from Magnetic Stripes

lineation
age
Plates travel: 1-20 cm/yr RELATIVE to each other

2 cm/yr

18 cm/yr
 Action is at boundaries
Continents along for the ride
 Convection
Flow of material when heated
Lava Lamp
3. Yellow stuff cools
--> denser
--> SINKS!
2. Yellow stuff heats
--> less dense
--> RISES!

1. Heated from below

Earth’s Lava Lamp:
Plate Tectonics

Driven by Earth Heat

HEAT: Earth is Hotter Deeper

1000C Temperature
°C
100
km

Depth
In
Earth

km
Heat in Earth
Temperature °C
Cold
and Lithosphere
Strong
~100
Hot and Weak
Astheno-
sphere

Depth
km
 Plate Boundaries
subduction
mid-ocean
zone
ridge
3 Plate Types of Plate Boundaries

•  Divergent

• Convergent

• Transform
 •  Divergent

Mid-Ocean Ridge
 Ridges

• Depth shallowest
at ridge axis

• Symmetric
North Mid-Atlantic
Ridge Bathymetry

rift valley

fracture
zone
Rifts: Continental Divergent Margins
Basin and Range -- a Rift

10
mm/yr
 • Transform

• San Andreas Fault

• Big Earthquakes,
No Volcanoes
• Offsets
 •  Transform

• San Andreas Fault

• Big Earthquakes,
No Volcanoes
• Offsets
Big Transform
Faults
Subduction Zones
•  Convergent

trench

oceanic

big quakes! 100 km

North Pacific
 Aleutian Arc Anchorage

bulldozed
a n os wedge
vol c

trench
Side View, real data

arc wedge
N
trench
  0

50   
km

1993
100 1974 1985 1983
  

-100 -50 0 km 50 100 150

East Aleutians
 Nicaragua Arc

Momotombo Momotombito
BU seismic experiment, 2004
BU seismic experiment, 2004
Continental Collisions
Thick Crust too light to subduct

collision
An Example: India-Eurasia
Everest
Hawaiian Chain: not a plate boundary?
Hot Spots
NOT Plate Boundaries

Observe:
• volcanoes in age order
• parallel trends

3 age
2
1
0 Ma
What's up?
 Hot spots have DEEP sources, below plates

plate

plate moves
hot spot stays put
Observe: All hotspots fixed to each other

Hotspots give ABSOLUTE Motion of plates

2 Ma 200 km 0 Ma

200 km= 10 cm/yr

2 Ma