Sentences with phrase «oceanic subduction»

Not exact matches

The relatively low - density continental crust of the North Island, which sits on the Australian plate, is forcing the dense oceanic crust on the Pacific plate beneath it in a process called subduction.

Three basic forces are believed to drive oceanic plate movement: plates are «pushed» away from mid-ocean ridges as new sea floor forms; plates are «pulled» as the oldest parts of the plate dive back into the earth at subduction zones; and convection within the asthenosphere helps ferry the plates along.

«Orogenic oceanic - continental subduction zones have been common as long as modern plate tectonics have been active,» Delph said.

Its strength resulted from the abrupt release of plate tectonic forces, a process known as subduction, centered on an area beneath Honshu where it slides over the top of oceanic crust.

It's the first time this tectonic process has been discovered beneath land; all other known subduction zones occur underwater where oceanic crusts meet.

Although the South America plate exhibits a chain of active volcanism resulting from the subduction and partial melting of the Nazca oceanic lithosphere along most of the arc, these regions of inferred shallow subduction correlate with an absence of volcanic activity.

The Sea of Okhotsk earthquake may have involved re-rupture of a fault in the plate produced when the oceanic plate bent down into the Kuril - Kamchatka subduction zone as it began to sink.

At subduction zones such as these, an oceanic tectonic plate sinks (subducts) into the Earth's interior, the mantle.

At certain subduction zones, such as those in Cascadia, Sumatra and eastern Alaska, a thick sediment layer overlies the subducting oceanic plate.

There it will seek out new species and habitats; it may also study subduction zones, where oceanic crust is recycled back into the earth's mantle.

The oceanic crust moves away from the mid-ocean-ridges and ultimately gets transported back into the underlying mantle through «subduction» at ocean trenches.

This suggests that the MORBs contain a «fingerprint» of the uranium from the oceanic crust, drawn down from the surface and into the upper part of Earth's mantle through subduction, according to Andersen.

Lead author of the study, Dr Caroline Eakin, Research Fellow in Ocean and Earth Science at the University of Southampton, said: «The process of consuming old seafloor at subduction zones, where great slabs of oceanic material are swallowed up, drives circulation in the Earth's interior and keeps the planet going strong.

In a subduction zone, a heavy oceanic plate meets a second, lighter continental plate and moves under it and into the earth's mantle.

In high - pressure and high - temperature X-ray measurements that were partly conducted at DESY, scientists created conditions similar to those in so - called subduction zones where an oceanic plate dives under the continental crust.

To understand how water affects subduction of the oceanic plate, in which layers of different rock types sink into the mantle, the UO team studied hydrogen isotopes in water contained in tiny blobs of glass trapped in olivine crystals in basalt.

The trench is created by the subduction of some of the world's oldest oceanic crust, which plunges underneath the Mariana Isalnds so steeply at places that it is going almost straight down.

Carbonates are important constituents of marine sediments and are heavily involved in the planet's deep carbon cycle, primarily due to oceanic crust sinking into the mantle, a process called subduction.

Possible reasons include increased oceanic circulation leading to increased subduction of heat into the ocean, higher than normal levels of stratospheric aerosols due to volcanoes during the past decade, incorrect ozone levels used as input to the models, lower than expected solar output during the last few years, or poorly modeled cloud feedback effects.

The most threatening earthquakes in Cascadia are those associated with the Cascadia subduction zone, which is the tectonic plate boundary between the subducting oceanic Juan de Fuca, Gorda, and Explorer Plates and the over-riding continental North America Plate.

Philippe Dorier, the organizer, talks about speed - dating and his clients From opening to subduction of an oceanic domain constrained by LA - ICP - MS U-Pb zircon dating (Variscan belt, Southern Armorican Massif, France)

Since, if I remember correctly, subduction generally occurs when a dense oceanic plate dives under a less dense continental plate, you'd have to get the waste to the seafloor and then bury it there in such a way that it wouldn't leak into the water before it sank deep enough into the Earth to be safely forgotten about.