What tectonic plate is northern California on?
Tectonic Plate Boundaries The Pacific Plate (on the west) slides horizontally northwestward relative to the North American Plate (on the east), causing earthquakes along the San Andreas and associated faults.
What type of plate boundary is the North American Plate?
Near Alaska, the North American Plate meets the Pacific Plate in a convergent boundary, meaning the plates are coming together.
What tectonic plate are we on in California?
In our lifetime, and for many generations to come, San Diego and Southern California will reside near the San Andreas Fault system, which divides the North American tectonic plate from the Pacific plate. There are roughly 12 major tectonic plates that cover the surface of the earth.
What volcanoes are in the North American Plate?
Subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate beneath the North American plate creates the Cascade volcanoes like Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainer, Mount Hood and more. Subduction of the Pacific plate beneath the North American plate in the north creates the long chain of the Aleutian Islands volcanoes near Alaska.
What fault in California is the boundary between the North American and Pacific plates?
The San Andreas Fault System, which crosses California from the Salton Sea in the south to Cape Mendocino in the north, is the boundary between the Pacific Plate (that includes the Pacific Ocean) and North American Plate (that includes North America).
What type of plate boundary does California straddle?
Essentially, California straddles the continent’s dynamic plate boundary. Similar to province boundaries but on a much larger scale, the plate boundary can be a very broad zone.
How was the North American Plate formed?
As one of the Earth’s original continents, the North American Plate started forming some three billion years ago when the planet was much hotter and mantle convection much more vigorous. Roughly two billions years ago, the Earth cooled and these old floating pieces of the lithosphere, called cratons, stopped growing.
What is the area of the North American Plate?
76 million km2
With an area of 76 million km2 (29 million sq mi), it is the Earth’s second largest tectonic plate, behind the Pacific Plate (which borders the plate to the west).
Where is the Pacific Plate?
The Pacific Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate that lies beneath the Pacific Ocean. At 103 million km2 (40 million sq mi), it is the largest tectonic plate.
What plate is Mt Shasta on?
The Gorda Plate is subducting under the North American Plate north of Cape Mendocino and is the cause of the state’s two active volcanoes, Mt Shasta and Mt. Lassen.
What formed Mt Shasta?
A large mountain, called ancestral Mt. Shasta, once stood on the site of today’s peak. About 350,000 years ago the north flank of this volcano collapsed, forming a great landslide that swept out across the Shasta Valley.
Where is the North American Plate moving?
The North American plate is moving to the west-southwest at about 2.3 cm (~1 inch) per year driven by the spreading center that created the Atlantic Ocean, the Mid Atlantic Ridge.
What type of tectonic plate is Mt Shasta?
The Gorda Plate is subducting under the North American Plate north of Cape Mendocino and is the cause of the state’s two active volcanoes, Mt Shasta and Mt. Lassen. Immediately north, the Juan de Fuca Plate is subducting under North America and is responsible for the Cascade Range Volcanoes.
What is the relative location of Mount Shasta?
/ 41.409196033°N 122.194888358°W / 41.409196033; -122.194888358 Mount Shasta ( Shasta: Waka-nunee-Tuki-wuki; Karuk: Úytaahkoo) is a potentially active volcano at the southern end of the Cascade Range in Siskiyou County, California.
How did Mount Shasta get so big?
Over time, an ancestral Mount Shasta stratovolcano was built to a large but unknown height; sometime between 300,000 and 360,000 years ago the entire north side of the volcano collapsed, creating an enormous landslide or debris avalanche, 6.5 cu mi (27 km 3) in volume.
Does Mount Shasta have any glaciers?
Mount Shasta’s surface is relatively free of deep glacial erosion except, paradoxically, for its south side where Sargents Ridge runs parallel to the U-shaped Avalanche Gulch. This is the largest glacial valley on the volcano, although it does not now have a glacier in it.