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In Earth: The outer shell
…major separate rigid blocks, or plates. There are two types of plates, oceanic and continental. An example of an oceanic plate is the Pacific Plate, which extends from the East Pacific Rise to the deep-sea trenches bordering the western part of the Pacific basin. A continental plate is exemplified by…
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In crust–mantle model
…or possibly even 10, large plates of lithospheric material constantly moving with respect to each other; they are thought to be created from the asthenosphere at one edge, the ocean ridges, and to move away from these ridges to be reabsorbed back into the asthenosphere at the other edge, the…
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In North America: General considerations
…ridges to subduction zones includes plates of rock up to 60 miles (100 km) thick. This rigid outer shell of the Earth is called the lithosphere, as distinct from the underlying hotter and more fluid asthenosphere. The portions of lithospheric plates descending into the asthenosphere at subduction zones are called…
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In volcanism
…boundaries of the enormous rigid plates that make up the lithosphere—the crust and upper mantle. The majority of active terrestrial volcanoes (roughly 80 percent) and related phenomena occur where two tectonic plates converge and one overrides the other, forcing it down into the mantle to be reabsorbed. Long curved chains…
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In volcano: Volcanoes related to plate boundaries
Topographic maps reveal the locations of large earthquakes and indicate the boundaries of the 12 major tectonic plates. For example, the Pacific Plate is bounded by the earthquake zones of New Zealand, New Guinea, the Mariana Islands, Japan,
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