CHAPTER 8: PLATE TECTONICS
I.LEARNING OUTCOMES:
1. Identify the evidences that Wegener and his supporters gathered to support the
continental drift hypothesis
2. Describe the different plate motions associated with plate boundaries and explain how
these processes affect the distribution of volcanoes and earthquakes throughout the
world
3. Relate the plate tectonics theory to the presence of a volcanic chain in the Bicol region
and the mountainous topography of the country
II. CONTENT
A. INTRODUCTION
In 1915, Alfred Wegener, a German meteorologist and geophysicist, published “The
Origin of Continents and Oceans”. In this book, he set forth his radical hypothesis – the
continental drift theory.
Wegener suggested that a supercontinent Pangaea (meaning “all land”) once
existed. About 200 million years ago, this supercontinent began breaking into smaller
continents which then drifted to their present positions.
B. EVIDENCES CONSIDERED TO SUPPORT THESE CLAIMS:
1. Continental Jigsaw Puzzle - Wegener suspected that the continents might have been
joined when he noticed the remarkable similarity
between the coastlines on opposite sides of the South
Atlantic.
2. Fossils Match Across the Seas - there were identical fossils on the widely separated
land masses.
3. Rock Types and Structures Match - several mountain belts that terminate at one
coastline reappear on a landmass across the ocean.
Example:
Appalachian Mountains trends north-eastward through Eastern United
States. Mountains of comparable age and structure are found in the British
Isles and Scandinavia.
4. Ancient Climate - Wegener discovered layers of glacial till in Southern Africa, South
America, India and Australia indicating that ice sheets once covered
extensive areas of the southern hemisphere. Much of the land area
containing evidence of glaciation presently lies within 30 degrees of the
equator and has a tropical climate.
Wegener believed that a better explanation for paleoclimatic regimes he
observed is provided by fitting together the landmasses as a supercontinent, with South Africa
centered over the South Pole. This would account for the conditions necessary to generate
extensive expanses of glacial ice over much of the Southern Hemisphere. This geography would
also place the northern landmasses nearer the tropics and account for their vast coal deposits.
C. THE PLATE TECTONICS THEORY
This theory proposes that the Earth’s outer shell consists of individual plates
which interact in various ways and thereby produce earthquakes, volcanoes, mountains and the
crust itself. According to the plate tectonics model, the uppermost mantle, along with overlying
crust, behaves as a strong, rigid layer known as the lithosphere.
This outermost shell overlies a weaker region in the mantle known as the
asthenosphere. Further, the lithosphere is broken into numerous segments called plates that
are in motion and are continually changing in shape and size.
D. PLATE BOUNDARIES
Differentiated by the type of movement they exhibit:
1.) Divergent boundary – where plates move apart, resulting in upwelling of material from
the mantle to create a new seafloor.
2.) Convergent boundaries – where plates move together resulting in the subduction
(consumption) of oceanic lithosphere into the mantle.
3.) Transform fault boundaries – where plates grind past each other without the
production or destruction of lithosphere.
E. DIVERGENT BOUNDARIES
Most are situated along the crests of oceanic ridges.
The mechanism is seafloor spreading – the plates move away from the ridge axis,
the fractures created are immediately filled with molten rock that oozes up from
the hot asthenosphere. This material cools slowly to produce new slivers of
seafloor.
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/classes/scmh/1010/Plate.php
F. CONVERGENT BOUNDARIES
The zones of plate convergence are the sites where oceanic lithosphere is
subducted and absorbed into the mantle.
The region where an oceanic plate descends into the asthenosphere is called
subduction zone, as the oceanic plate slides beneath the overriding plate, the
oceanic plate bends producing a deep-ocean trench.
G. TYPES OF CONVERGENCE
1. Oceanic-Continental Convergence - when the leading edge of a plate capped
with continental crust converges with a plate capped with oceanic crust, the
plate with the less dense continental material remains floating while the denser
oceanic slab sinks into the asthenosphere. This type of convergence may
produce continental volcanic arcs.
https://www.ck12.org/earth-science/ocean-continent-convergent-plate-boundaries/lesson/Ocean-Continent-
Convergent-Plate-Boundaries-HS-ES
2. Oceanic-Oceanic Convergence - when two oceanic slabs converge, one
descends beneath the other, initiating volcanic activity similar to oceanic-
continental convergence but the volcanoes here form on the ocean floor rather
than in a continent. If the activity is sustained, it will eventually build volcanic
structures that emerge as islands called as volcanic island arc.
Examples: Aleutian, Mariana and Tongga islands
https://www.slideshare.net/esteeseetoh/convergent-boundaries oceanic-
oceanichttps://www.thinglink.com/scene/503622060883312641
3. Continental - Continental Convergence - when two plates carrying continental
crust converge, neither plate will subduct beneath the other because of low
density, resulting in collision between two continental blocks.
Examples: Subcontinent of India rammed into Asia and produced the
Himalayas, Alps, Appalachians and Ural Mountains
http://community.fortunecity.ws/millennium/rollingacres/1250/nature/nature-08.html
H. TRANSFORM FAULT BOUNDARIES
discovered in 1965 by a Canadian researcher who suggested that these large
faults connect the global active belts (convergent and divergent boundaries) into
a continuous network that divides the earths outer shell into several rigid plates.
Most transform faults join two segments of a mid-ocean ridge.
Provide the means by which the oceanic crust created at ridge crests can be
transported to a site of destruction- the deep ocean trenches.
https://www.pinterest.ph/pin/218424650647324400/
I. TESTING THE PLATE TECTONICS MODEL:
1. Paleomagnetism – the natural remnant magnetism in rock bodies. The
permanent magnetization acquired by a rock that can be used to determine the
location of the magnetic poles and the latitude of the rock at the time it
became magnetized. When rocks exhibit the same magnetism as the present
magnetic field, they possess normal polarity while those rocks exhibiting the
opposite magnetic reversals was obtained from lavas and sediments from
around the world.
https://www.slideshare.net/ahmadraza05
2. Magnetic reversals was tied to seafloor spreading in 1963 when alternating
strips of high and low-intensity magnetism that trended in north-south
direction was discovered.
https://college.cengage.com/geology/resources/protected/physicallab/resourcedesk/glossary/m/magn
eticreversal.html
3. Earthquake Patterns - in 1968, three seismologists demonstrated how the plate
tectonics model accounted for the global distribution of earthquakes. They
were able to account for the close association between deep-focus earthquakes
and ocean trenches and the absence of deep-focus earthquakes along the
oceanic ridge system.
https://earthquakesinphilippines.weebly.com/about-earthquakes-in-philippines.html
4. Ocean Drilling - drilling sediments directly from the ocean floor and the
objective is to gather samples of sediments from above the igneous crust as a
means of dating the seafloor at each site.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JOIDES_Resolution
FINDINGS:
When the oldest sediment from each drill site was plotted against its distance from
the ridge crest, it was revealed that the age of the sediment increased with increasing distance
from the ridge. This finding agreed with the sea floor spreading hypothesis which predicted that
the youngest oceanic crust would be found at the ridge crest and that the oldest would be at
the continental margins.
5. HOT SPOTS - a proposed concentration of heat at the mantle capable of
introducing magma that extrudes onto Earth’s surface, the intraplate volcanism
that produced the Hawaiian Islands. Mapping of the sea floor volcanoes called
seamounts in the Pacific revealed a chain of volcanic structures extending from
the Hawaiian Islands to Midway Islands and then continuing northward toward
the Aleutian trench.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/what-were-still-learning-about-hawaii-74730/
III. REFERENCES:
BOOKS
Thompson and Turk, Introduction to Earth Science, 2012
Braganza, C. S., Earth Science, 2005
Tarbuck and Lutgens, Earth Science, 2002
Timothy Kusky, Ph.D., ENCYCLOPEDIA of Earth and Space Science, 2010
Thompson and Sammonds, Advances in Earth Science From Earthquakes to Global Warming,
2007
INTERNET SOURCES:
http://www.auburn.edu/academic/classes/scmh/1010/Plate.php
https://www.ck12.org/earth-science/ocean-continent-convergent-plate-
boundaries/lesson/Ocean-Continent-Convergent-Plate-Boundaries-HS-ES
https://www.slideshare.net/esteeseetoh/convergent-boundaries oceanic-
oceanichttps://www.thinglink.com/scene/503622060883312641
http://community.fortunecity.ws/millennium/rollingacres/1250/nature/nature-08.html
https://www.pinterest.ph/pin/218424650647324400/
https://www.slideshare.net/ahmadraza05
https://college.cengage.com/geology/resources/protected/physicallab/resourcedesk/glossary/
m/magneticreversal.html
https://earthquakesinphilippines.weebly.com/about-earthquakes-in-philippines.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JOIDES_Resolution
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/what-were-still-learning-about-hawaii-74730/
