Week 5 - Converging Plates

This week, my husband and I cruised over the Washington-Oregon coastline. There, we discovered that it was one of the locations within the convergent plate boundary where oceanic plates in Juan de Fuca subducts beneath west of North America continental plates. When enormous lithospheric plates converge, it either result in a joint of an oceanic crust to oceanic crust, oceanic crust to continental crust, or continental crust to continental crust. This results in producing magma and earthquakes. If the magma becomes felsic, it may be to thick to rise through crust, therefore, leaving it to cool and form into granite. Towards the end of the cruise, we had learned about other plate boundaries in different locations such as the transform boundary in San Andreas and New Zealand, and divergent boundary in Mid-Atlantic and East Pacific. At the end of cruise, we left wishing to curse over one of the locations within the transform boundary, New Zealand.

Locations of convergent boundary.

Oceanic plate of Juan de Fuca subducting beneath west of North America.

An illustration of when an oceanic plate collide with continental plate.