Landforms Caused by Plate Tectonics

What happens when two continental plates collide? Instead, a collision between two continental plates crunches and folds the rock at the boundary, lifting it up and leading to the formation of mountains and mountain ranges.

There are two types of divergent boundaries, categorized by where they occur: continental rift zones and mid-ocean ridges.

• Fold Mountains. The compressional forces stemming from a convergent plate boundary, where two plates collide with one another, can create fold mountains.
• Ocean Trenches.
• Island Arcs.
• Ocean Ridges.

Mountains are usually formed at what are called convergent plate boundaries, meaning a boundary at which two plates are moving towards one another. Sometimes, the two tectonic plates press up against each other, causing the land to lift into mountainous forms as the plates continue to collide.

Transform boundaries are places where plates slide sideways past each other. At transform boundaries lithosphere is neither created nor destroyed. Many transform boundaries are found on the sea floor, where they connect segments of diverging mid-ocean ridges. California’s San Andreas fault is a transform boundary.

Transform Earthquakes Although they neither create nor destroy land, transform boundaries and strike-slip faults can create deep, shallow earthquakes. These are common at mid-ocean ridges, but they do not normally produce deadly tsunamis because there is no vertical displacement of seafloor.

Volcanoes do not typically occur at transform boundaries. One of the reasons for this is that there is little or no magma available at the plate boundary. There are three settings where volcanoes typically form: constructive plate boundaries.

These “transform faults” actually stagger the axis of spreading, and are very common along all known zones of divergence. But, because there is no ripping apart or subduction taking place along a transform fault, there isn’t any magma formation to lead to volcanoes.

The grinding action between the plates at a transform plate boundary results in shallow earthquakes, large lateral displacement of rock, and a broad zone of crustal deformation. Perhaps nowhere on Earth is such a landscape more dramatically displayed than along the San Andreas Fault in western California.

Effects that are found at a divergent boundary between oceanic plates include: a submarine mountain range such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge; volcanic activity in the form of fissure eruptions; shallow earthquake activity; creation of new seafloor and a widening ocean basin.

Tectonic shift is the movement of the plates that make up Earth’s crust. 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.

Juan de Fuca Plate