The rising and spreading of crust at mors and the sinking of crust at subduction zone is what moves the continents.
The sea floor spreads at subduction zones.
When oceanic plates diverge tensional stress causes fractures to occur in the lithosphere.
At subduction zones the edge of the denser plate subducts or slides beneath the less dense one.
As a result the atlantic basin is expanding at about 0 5 to 4 inches a year.
A transform fault or transform boundary is a fault along a plate boundary where the motion is predominantly horizontal.
The motivating force for seafloor spreading ridges is tectonic plate slab pull at subduction zones rather than magma pressure although there is typically.
These age data also allow the rate of seafloor spreading to be determined and they show that rates.
Basic outline of sea floor spreading that leads to ocean crust diving beneath continental crust.
Trenches accretionary wedges prisms and volcanic or island arcs are key surface features produced by subduction.
Some fundamental geologic processes like earthquakes and landforms like volcanoes result from.
It ends abruptly where it connects to another plate boundary either another transform a spreading ridge or a subduction zone.
Seafloor spreading theory that oceanic crust forms along submarine mountain zones known collectively as the mid ocean ridge system and spreads out laterally away from them.
Most such faults are found in oceanic crust where they accommodate the lateral offset between segments of divergent boundaries forming a zigzag.
Subduction happens where tectonic plates crash into each other instead of spreading apart.
This idea played a pivotal role in the development of the theory of plate tectonics which revolutionized geologic thought during the last quarter of the 20th century.
Subduction is one of the two major processes of plate tectonics the other being seafloor spreading.
A subduction zone is the entire area of subduction between the trench and the volcanic arc.
The atlantic is home to the mid atlantic ridge a mountain range that extends for about 10 000 miles and is the site of seafloor spreading.
Since there are minimal subduction zones in the atlantic very few older plates are subducted when spreading occurs.
Because there is more seafloor spreading than subduction.
The denser lithospheric material then melts back into the earth s mantle.
Seafloor spreading is just one part of plate tectonics.
Seafloor spreading helps to explain continental drift in the theory of plate tectonics.
