Learn how subduction zones form, drive massive earthquakes, create volcanoes, and shape Earth’s surface through powerful ...

The oceanic trenches are hemispheric-scale long but narrow topographic depressions of the sea floor. They also are the deepest parts of the ocean floor. Trenches define one of the most important ...

The Earth's crust is divided into tectonic plates that move due to forces within the planet. There are three types of plate interactions: divergent boundaries, where plates move apart and seafloor ...

Woods Hole, Mass. (April 11, 2025) - Being a geophysicist can sometimes feel like being a detective —uncovering clues, and then building a case based on the evidence. In a new article published in ...

New crust is continually being pushed away from divergent boundaries (where sea-floor spreading occurs), increasing Earth's surface. But the Earth isn't getting any bigger. What happens, then, to keep ...

The Tethys Ocean system produced microplates involved in the Alpine collisional zone 7, the Cache Creek terrane 8 and Klamath Mountains province 9 in North America, whereas the Rheic Ocean yielded the ...