It should come as no surprise that this perimeter has been nicknamed the Ring of Fire.. Earths crust The outermost layer of Earth. The long mountain ridges and narrow bays in the region surrounding U. S. Virgin Islands National Park are a product of compression due to the convergence, in addition to lateral motion due to shearing along the transform plate boundary. April 27, 2012. When two tectonic plates slide past each other, the place where they meet is a transform or lateral fault. Seismic waves caused the earth to "ring like a bell." As bad as the tremors were, the worst was yet to come. Policies and Notices, U.S. Department of the Interior | The earthquake rupture started approximately 25 km beneath the surface, with its epicenter about 6 miles (10 km) east of the mouth of College Fiord, 56 miles (90 km) west of Valdez and 75 miles (120 km) east of Anchorage. When the plates finally give and slip due to the increased pressure, energy is released as seismic waves, causing the ground to shake. The Australian plate is a continental plate and the Pacific plate is an oceanic plate. It is relatively cold and brittle. She now estimates that it takes at least 500 years of plate motion to set the stage for such big earthquakes. The cards slip along their faces, forming a broad zone of shearing between your unaffected hands. As you slide your hands laterally past one another, a broad zone of shearing develops as several card faces slip. Indeed, like ripples in a pond, a tsunami travels outward in all directions. Another form of convergent boundary is a collision where two continental plates meet head-on. In the Caribbean Sea, the U. S. Virgin Islands lie along a transform plate boundary where the small Caribbean Plate moves eastward past the oceanic part of the North American Plate. First posted September 10, 2012 Revised August 8, 2013, For additional information: The earthquake was accompanied by vertical displacement over an area of about 520,000 square kilometers. Imagine traveling from New Zealand clockwise around the rim of the Pacific Ocean, all the way to the tip of South America. There are three main types of plate boundaries: There are four types of boundaries between tectonic plates that are defined by the movement of the plates: divergent and convergent boundaries, transform fault boundaries, and plate boundary zones. Thats where one tectonic plate sinks beneath another. The California Academy of Sciences is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. One of many trees damaged by quake impacts. Feature labels. These films were shot by amateur and professional cameramen in the hours and days following the earthquake at locations such as Anchorage, Kodiak, Seward, Valdez, Chenega, Afognak.
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