How long has the Pacific Plate been grinding past the North American Plate?

How long has the Pacific Plate been grinding past the North American Plate?

10 million years
Along it, the Pacific Plate has been grinding horizontally past the North American Plate for 10 million years, at an average rate of about 5 cm/yr.

What is happening to the Pacific and North American plates?

The Pacific Plate is being moved north west due to sea floor spreading from the East Pacific Rise (divergent margin) in the Gulf of California. The North American Plate is being pushed west and north west due to sea floor spreading from the Mid Atlantic Ridge (divergent margin).

When did the North American and Pacific plates collide?

80 to 40 million years ago
Canada’s east coast is relatively calm now, but its west coast lies on the Pacific’s earthquake-prone “ring of fire.” The North American plate began creeping westward 80 to 40 million years ago, eventually colliding with the Pacific plate.

Are the North American Plate and Pacific Plate convergent?

Convergent boundaries (subduction zone) The oceanic Pacific Plate subducts under the North American Plate (composed of both continental and oceanic sections) forming the Aleutian Trench.

What are the two plates at the major plate boundary of the most seismically active area of North America?

The San Andreas Fault, stretching along the central west coast of North America, is one of the most active faults on the Ring of Fire. It lies on the transform boundary between the North American Plate, which is moving south, and the Pacific Plate, which is moving north.

How fast do the plates in the San Andreas fault move?

The relative motion between these two tectonic plates is 50 mm/yr (about 2 inches/yr), but that rate is distributed across all the faults that are part of the SAFZ. The faults are boundaries between blocks, and each block is constantly moving, which we can see by analyzing GPS (Global Positioning System) data.

What is the largest tectonic plate?

the Pacific Plate
There are major, minor and micro tectonic plates. There are seven major plates: African, Antarctic, Eurasian, Indo-Australian, North American, Pacific and South American. The Hawaiian Islands were created by the Pacific Plate, which is the world’s largest plate at 39,768,522 square miles.

Which direction is the Eurasian plate and North American Plate moving?

The explanation is that plates move in a rotational manner. The North American Plate, for example, rotates counter-clockwise; the Eurasian Plate rotates clockwise. Boundaries between the plates are of three types: divergent (i.e., moving apart), convergent (i.e., moving together), and transform (moving side by side).

Which direction is the Eurasian Plate and North American Plate moving?

What causes the plates to move?

The heat from radioactive processes within the planet’s interior causes the plates to move, sometimes toward and sometimes away from each other. This movement is called plate motion, or tectonic shift.

How much does the Pacific Plate move each year?

The Pacific Plate is moving to the northwest at a speed of between 7 and 11 centimeters (cm) or ~3-4 inches a year. The North American plate is moving to the west-southwest at about 2.3 cm (~1 inch) per year driven by the spreading center that created the Atlantic Ocean, the Mid Atlantic Ridge.

How did the North American Plate change over time?

By 20 Ma, the Monterey-Pacific ridge stopped spreading and Monterey accreted to the Pacific plate. As a result, the Pacific plate’s motion with respect to the North American rotated, transforming a network of shallow faults into dextral transform faults (San Andreas) (Nicholson, 1994).

Where is the boundary between the Pacific and North American plates?

The San Andreas Fault System, which crosses California from the Salton Sea in the south to Cape Mendocino in the north, is the boundary between the Pacific Plate (that includes the Pacific Ocean) and North American Plate (that includes North America). These two plates are moving horizontally, slowly sliding past one another.

Where does the Pacific plate slide past the San Andreas Fault?

San Andreas Transform Plate Boundary The Pacific Plate slides north-northwestward past the North American Plate along the San Andreas Transform Plate Boundary. The San Andreas Fault is responsible for most of the movement in western California, causing a sliver of the state to slide past the rest of the continent.