Role of Pressure

Reducing the pressure lowers the melting temperature the rock probably melts RIDGE: When confining pressures drop, decompression melting occurs

Basalts forming in rifts and Mid Oceanic Ridges (MORs)

Decompression Melting: Magma under lithosphere heats and cracks it. Mantle rock is exposed to low pressures it partially melts

 Role of

Temperature
Increase in temperature can occur because of the upward intrusion of magma in the mantle.

Divergent

Using hands to show relative motion

Transform Convergent

USGS Graphics

 Spreading ridges
As plates move apart new material is erupted to fill the gap

 Divergent boundaries are also present under

continents during the early stages of continental breakup

Beneath a continent,
magma

wells

up, and the crust is initially

elevated, stretched and thinned

 The stretching produces fractures and rift valleys.

During this stage,

magma

typically intrudes into the fractures and flows onto the valley floor

Example: East African Rift Valley

 As spreading proceeds, some rift valleys

will continue to lengthen and deepen until the continental crust eventually breaks a narrow linear sea is formed, separating two continental blocks Examples:
Red Sea Gulf of California

: An example of continental rifting

Iceland has a divergent plate boundary running through its middle

 Called SUBDUCTION

 An oceanic-continental plate boundary

Magma generated by subduction

occurs when a denser oceanic plate subducts under less dense continental lithosphere rises into the continental crust to form large igneous bodies
or erupts to form a volcanic arc of andesitic volcanoes Example: Pacific coast of South America

 How can former subduction zones be recognized in the rock record?

Andesitic magma erupted, forming island arc volcanoes and continental volcanoes The subduction complex results in a zone of intensely deformed rocks between the trench and the area of igneous activity Sediments and submarine rocks are folded, faulted and metamorphosed making a chaotic mixture of rocks termed a mlange Slices of oceanic lithosphere may be accreted to the continent edge and are called ophiolites

 Ophiolites consist of layers

The sediments include graywackes black shales cherts Ophiolites are key to detecting old subduction zones

representing parts of the oceanic crust and upper mantle.

 Forms mountains, e.g. European Alps, Himalayas

 Two approaching continents are initially When the 2 continents collide

separated by ocean floor that is being subducted under one of them, which, thus, has a volcanic arc the continental lithosphere cannot subduct

Its density is too low,

although

one continent may partly slide under the other

 Two kinds of arcs are generally observed on Earth: A) Island arc- formed on oceanic lithosphere Ex. Tonga isalnd arc and Mariana B) Continental arc formed on the continent Ex. Cascade Volcanic arc

Transform Boundaries
Lithosphere is neither produced nor destroyed as the plates slide horizontally past each other.

Strike-slip fault Example: San Andreas Fault, California

Strike-slip fault between two spreading ridges allows the two plates to move apart.

 In addition to a thermal convection system,

some geologists think that movement may be aided by slab-pull

the slab is cold and dense and pulls the plate

ridge-push

rising magma pushes the ridges up gravity pushes the oceanic lithosphere away from the ridge and toward the trench

PLATE TECTONICS