GEOG 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Continental Crust, Plate Tectonics, North American Plate
18 Apr 2019
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Week 8 - global tectonics: plates and plumes. Wegener saw the continents as a jigsaw puzzle that fit together into a prior single supercontinent, pangea, surrounded by the sea panthalassa. The earth is made up of 3 main layers. Subduction is the process when oceanic crust sinks under continental crust. The earth"s crust is divided into 12 major plates which are moved in various directions. This plate motion causes them to collide, pull apart, or scrape against each other. Each type of interaction causes a characteristic set of earth structures or. The word, tectonic refers to the deformation of the crust as a consequence of plate interaction. We are located on the north american plate. Plates spreading apart from one another - divergent. Crust + mantle should always be considered when speaking of the lithosphere. Below the lithosphere (which makes up the tectonic plates) is the asthenosphere. This contains the mantle, outer core & inner core.
