Plate interiors are relatively stable, and most of the tectonic action (earthquakes, volcanism) takes place where plates meet – where they collide at convergent boundaries, move away from one another at divergent boundaries, or slide past one another at transform boundaries. The asthenosphere is solid, but flows plastically over geologic time scales. The lithosphere is broken up into a number of thin plates, which move on top of the asthenosphere (middle mantle). The theory posits that the outermost layers of the Earth (the crust and uppermost mantle) make up the brittle lithosphere of the Earth. Plate tectonics is a unifying framework for understanding the dynamic geology of the Earth.
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