Table of Contents
What two plates are on either side of the San Andreas Fault?
Two of these moving plates meet in western California; the boundary between them is the San Andreas fault. The Pacific Plate (on the west) moves northwestward relative to the North American Plate (on the east), causing earthquakes along the fault.
What are the two sides of a fault?
The two sides of a non-vertical fault are known as the hanging wall and footwall. The hanging wall occurs above the fault plane and the footwall occurs below it.
Are there 2 plate boundaries?
There are three kinds of plate tectonic boundaries: divergent, convergent, and transform plate boundaries. This image shows the three main types of plate boundaries: divergent, convergent, and transform. Image courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey.
What plate boundary has faults?
transform plate boundary
The motion along a transform plate boundary typically occurs along major transform faults, which on continents are commonly referred to as strike–slip faults.
Is convergent boundary a fault?
About 80% of earthquakes occur where plates are pushed together, called convergent boundaries. Another form of convergent boundary is a collision where two continental plates meet head-on. When two tectonic plates slide past each other, the place where they meet is a transform or lateral fault.
How are the different types of faulting related?
The different styles of faulting can also combine in a single event, with one fault moving in both a vertical and strike-slip motion during an earthquake. All faults are related to the movement of Earth’s tectonic plates. The biggest faults mark the boundary between two plates.
How are fault lines formed between two plates?
The biggest faults mark the boundary between two plates. Seen from above, these appear as broad zones of deformation, with many faults braided together. “Plate boundaries are always growing and changing, so these faults develop kinks and bends as they slide past each other, which generates more faults,” van der Elst said.
How are thrust faults different from strike slip faults?
A thrust fault is a special kind of reverse fault where one or more plates are under the ocean. At a thrust fault, a plate below the sea is moving under another plate, thrusting its edge upward. The process of one plate diving under the other is called subduction. Thrust faults can produce larger earthquakes than strike-slip faults.
What is the name of the boundary between two plates?
Plate boundaries. The first sort of plate boundary is called a divergent boundary, or spreading center. At these boundaries, two plates move away from one another. As the two move apart, mid-ocean ridges are created as magma from the mantle upwells through a crack in the oceanic crust and cools.