Question

What are the three types of plate boundaries? Write their characteristic features.

Answer 1

Hint: Plate boundaries are the sides or the tip where two plates meet. Volcanoes, earthquakes, and mountain buildings occur at the plate boundaries. Plate boundaries are found at the sting of the lithosphere plates.

Complete Answer:
There are three main varieties of plate boundaries which are:
1. Convergent boundaries are the boundaries where the two plates crash together, one dives beneath the opposite. It causes volcanoes and earthquakes at a range of depths.
Features of convergent boundary are:
- Volcanoes: When the plate being forced downward sets about to liquefy, this lava grows to the surface, which forms into volcanoes.
- Trenches: When a heavier plate is forced downward, creates a subduction zone. This process is resulting in a trench.
- Island Arcs: The long chains of active volcanoes with intense activity found within the convergent boundaries.

2. Divergent boundaries are the boundaries that volcanic eruptions and shallow earthquakes are common where the plates are moving apart.
Features of divergent boundary are:
- Seafloor spreading could be a process that happens at mid-ocean ridges.
- Volcanoes: When the plate being forced downward sets about to liquefy, this lava grows to the surface, which forms into volcanoes.
- Earthquakes are caused when rock or cornerstone underground all of a sudden shatters together with a fault.
- Ocean formation: Ocean formed when plates move apart at their divergent boundary.

3. Transform plate boundary is the boundary where the plate slides one another. Most transform faults are found within the ocean basin. Transform boundary is also known as transform fault.
Features of transform plate boundary are:
- Transform boundaries constitute the borders found within the broken pieces of the earth’s crust.
- Linear valleys, small ponds, deep trenches, often mark the situation of a transformed boundary.

Note: Example of Plate boundary is the boundary between Indian plate and also the Eurasian plate. The Washington-Oregon coastline of the United States is an example of Convergent boundary.
Examples of divergent boundaries are Mid-Atlantic ridge, red sea rift, etc. The San Andreas Fault Zone of western North America is an example of a Transform plate boundary.