Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
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the putting on of weight that is the cause of undersea volcanic
eruptions, but relentless pressure of heat from the planet's interior.
Further spurs of volcanoes run in a line south along the East
African Rift Valley from the Red Sea - itself the product of the
divergence of the African and the Arabian plates - and from
Turkey and Greece to southern Italy, where the African plate
pushes up against the Eurasian plate. Yet other volcanoes crop up
where the lithosphere happens to be thin, at great distances from
plate boundaries, as in Hawaii, Central Asia and West Africa.
As the tectonic plates move in relation to each other, so they
perform different approaches. They diverge, or pull apart, as in the
mid-Atlantic ridge, of which Iceland is a volcanic effusion. They
rub together laterally, as at the San Andreas Fault in California.
A third meeting is convergence and collision. In this case, there
Lava flow from Arenal
Volcano eruption,
Costa Rica.
