The Cocos Plate is a young oceanic tectonic plate beneath the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Central America, named for Cocos Island, which rides upon it.The Cocos Plate was created approximately 23 million years ago when the Farallon Plate broke into two pieces, which also created the Nazca Plate.The Cocos Plate also broke into two pieces, creating the small …

The Caribbean Plate is a mostly oceanic tectonic plate underlying Central America and the Caribbean Sea off the north coast of South America.. Roughly 3.2 million square kilometers (1.2 million square miles) in area, the Caribbean Plate borders the North American Plate, the South American Plate, the Nazca Plate and the Cocos Plate.These borders are regions of intense …

Subduction is a geological process in which the oceanic lithosphere is recycled into the Earth's mantle at convergent boundaries.Where the oceanic lithosphere of a tectonic plate converges with the less dense lithosphere of a second plate, the heavier plate dives beneath the second plate and sinks into the mantle. A region where this process occurs is known as a subduction …

The most dramatic orogenic belt on the planet is the one between the Indo-Australian Plate and African Plate on one side (to the South) and the Eurasian Plate on the other side (to the North). This belt runs from New Zealand in the East-SouthEast, through Indonesia, along the Himalayas, through the Middle East up to the Mediterranean in the West-Northwest.It is also called the …

The North American Plate is a tectonic plate covering most of North America, Cuba, the Bahamas, extreme northeastern Asia, and parts of Iceland and the Azores.With an area of 76 million km 2 (29 million sq mi), it is the Earth's second largest tectonic plate, behind the Pacific Plate (which borders the plate to the west).. It extends eastward to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and …

The Ring of Fire (also known as the Pacific Ring of Fire, the Rim of Fire, the Girdle of Fire or the Circum-Pacific belt) is a region around much of the rim of the Pacific Ocean where many volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur. The Ring of Fire is a horseshoe-shaped belt about 40,000 km (25,000 mi) long and up to about 500 km (310 mi) wide.. The Ring of Fire includes the Pacific …

Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai is a submarine volcano in the Kermadec-Tonga Ridge in South Pacific, a ridge formed by the convergent boundary where the Pacific Plate is subducted by the Indo-Australian Plate, forming a long volcanic and island chain. Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai volcano lies almost completely underwater, with the exception of two small volcanic islands, …

The Nazca Plate or Nasca Plate, named after the Nazca region of southern Peru, is an oceanic tectonic plate in the eastern Pacific Ocean basin off the west coast of South America.The ongoing subduction, along the Peru–Chile Trench, of the Nazca Plate under the South American Plate is largely responsible for the Andean orogeny.The Nazca Plate is bounded on the west by the …

New Zealand has been the site of many large explosive eruptions during the last two million years, including several of supervolcano size. These include eruptions from Macauley Island and the Taupō, Whakamaru, Mangakino, Reporoa, Rotorua, and Haroharo calderas.. Two relatively recent eruptions from the Taupō Volcano are perhaps the best known. Its Oruanui eruption …

Major active fault zones of New Zealand showing variation in displacement vector along the Pacific–Indo-Australian plate boundary (left) and the distribution of earthquakes (magnitude 5 or greater) New Zealand earthquakes 1960 to 2020; Magnitude Annual average 4.0–4.9 355.9 5.0–5.9 29.28 6.0–6.9 1.66 ... Earthquakes occur frequently in New Zealand as the country is …