Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
should he so few plates making up the surface of the eatth. North Ametica,
for instance, though gigantic in itself, is only one piece of a plate that also
includes half the Atlantic Ocean. The plates that make up the preponder-
ance of the vast Pacific Ocean are even larger. But interspersed among
these hehemoths are smaller versions, the microplates. When microplates
and larger plates interact, quite complex geological events can occur. Take,
for example, the region around Indonesia. It rests on a microplate squeezed
between three behemoths: the India-Australia plate, the Pacific Plate, and
the Eurasian plate. Australia at the present time is moving forward, slowly
squeezing all of the myriad island around Indonesia
into
Asia in the
process. The result is geological chaos: The collision is smashing volcanic
island chains, sediment-filled basins, pieces of continental matgins, oceanic
seamounts, and young oceanic crust into the same geological blender. Each
of these units is composed of its own rock type, and as they squish together
and ooze over one another, a most complex assemblage is formed. Some
pieces are raised upward, others are depressed and run over; mountains form,
mountains are destroyed. Pity the poor geologists of 50 million years from
Subduction zone along the descending Pacific Plate.
