133 articles
Laurentia
Laurentia, the North American craton, is the ancient geological core of North America, assembled by 1.7 billion years ago and including Greenland and northwest Scotland until the Late Cretaceous.
Lhasa terrane
The Lhasa terrane is a continental fragment that makes up southern Tibet and was the last crustal block to accrete to Eurasia before India collided with it.
Lineament analysis
Lineament analysis is a remote sensing and structural geology method that maps linear surface features such as faults from satellite imagery and DEMs to infer subsurface geological structure.
Lineation
Lineation is any repeated, penetrative alignment of linear elements in a rock, the linear counterpart of foliation in structural geology; stretching lineations track maximum elongation and help predict ore shoot geometry.
List of tectonic plate interactions
Tectonic plate interactions are how lithosphere plates move relative to each other where they meet: divergent, convergent, and transform boundaries, each producing its own landforms, earthquakes, and volcanoes.
List of tectonic plates
The list of tectonic plates covers Earth's rigid lithosphere slabs; the widely cited PB2002 model lists 52, including 14 large plates such as the Pacific.
Lithosphere
The lithosphere is the Earth's rigid outer shell, comprising the crust and uppermost mantle; broken into tectonic plates, it is where essentially all earthquakes occur.
Main Central Thrust
The Main Central Thrust (MCT) is a major thrust fault running nearly the entire length of the Himalaya, first named by Heim and Gansser in 1939.
Mantle convection
Mantle convection is the slow creeping flow of Earth's solid mantle, which moves a few centimeters per year and drives the plate tectonics responsible for earthquakes, mountain ranges, and volcanoes.
Megathrust earthquake
A megathrust earthquake is a great earthquake of moment magnitude 8 or more that ruptures the plate-boundary fault of a subduction zone, including the largest recorded quakes.
Metamorphic core complex
A metamorphic core complex is a domal geological structure where deep metamorphic and granitic rocks are brought to the surface by extension on a low-angle detachment fault.
Microplate
A microplate is a small, relatively rigid block of lithosphere that moves independently of the major tectonic plates, with oceanic examples like the Easter microplate.
Mountain formation
Mountain formation, called orogeny or mountain building, is the set of geological processes that build mountain ranges, chiefly through the collision and convergence of tectonic plates.
Nankai Trough
The Nankai Trough (南海トラフ) is an oceanic trench off southwest Japan where the Philippine Sea Plate subducts beneath the Eurasian plate, producing recurring magnitude-8 earthquakes.
Nappe
A nappe is a large, sheet-like body of rock that has moved far from its original position by thrust faulting or recumbent folding, a structure typical of mountain ranges.
Nazca Plate
The Nazca Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate in the southeastern Pacific, formed from the Farallon Plate about 23 million years ago, that subducts beneath South America.
Normal fault
A normal fault is a dip-slip fault on which the hanging wall moves downward relative to the footwall, forming where the crust is pulled apart by extension.
North American Plate
The North American Plate is a major tectonic plate covering most of North America, Greenland, and Atlantic floor, bounded by the San Andreas Fault and Cascadia subduction zone.
North Anatolian Fault
The North Anatolian Fault (NAF) is a major right-lateral strike-slip fault in northern Turkey, about 1,200 km long, marking the boundary between the Anatolian and Eurasian plates.
Nuna (supercontinent)
Nuna, also known as Columbia or Hudsonland, is a hypothesized supercontinent assembled from most of Earth's ancient continental cores between roughly 1.9 and 1.6 billion years ago, preceding Rodinia and Pangaea.
Obduction
Obduction is the tectonic process by which dense oceanic lithosphere, typically preserved as an ophiolite, is thrust onto lighter continental lithosphere instead of sinking at subduction zones.
Oceanic crust
Oceanic crust is the thin, dense basaltic layer beneath the oceans, formed at mid-ocean ridges and recycled at subduction zones, covering about 60% of Earth's surface.
Oceanic plateau
An oceanic plateau is a vast region of anomalously thick oceanic crust, typically over 200,000 km² in area, formed by mantle plumes; the largest is the Ontong Java Plateau.
Orogeny
Orogeny is the process by which mountain belts form, typically when tectonic plates collide or converge, folding and thickening the crust; examples include the Alps, Himalayas, and Appalachians.
Pacific Plate
The Pacific Plate is the largest oceanic tectonic plate on Earth, underlying most of the Pacific Ocean. Its subduction zones produce most of the world's largest earthquakes.
Paleostress analysis
Paleostress analysis is a branch of structural geology that reconstructs past stress fields from deformation structures, most commonly fault-slip data and calcite twins, using inversion methods developed since the 1970s.
Pan-African orogeny
The Pan-African orogeny was a protracted series of tectonic, metamorphic, and magmatic events between about 725 and 500 million years ago, forming mobile belts during the assembly of Gondwana.
Pangaea
Pangaea, also spelled Pangea, was the supercontinent that assembled most of Earth's land about 300 million years ago and broke apart beginning about 201 million years ago.
Pangaea Proxima
Pangaea Proxima, originally named Pangea Ultima, is a hypothesized future supercontinent in which the Atlantic closes and the continents reassemble, projected to form 200 to 250 million years from now.
Pannotia
Pannotia, also known as the Vendian supercontinent, is a hypothetical supercontinent that may have formed around 600 million years ago, with Gondwana at its core and Laurentia, Baltica, and Siberia attached.