GEOLOGY NEWS -

NEW SUBDUCTION ZONE BRINGS EUROPE CLOSER TO AMERICA

 

Newly found subduction zone off the coast of Portugal.

 

Subduction zones are areas where one of the tectonic plates that cover the Earth's surface dives beneath another plate into the mantle - the layer just below the crust.  Tectonic plates movements are so powerful over time, that they can bring continents together into one Supercontinent.

 

Lead author Dr João Duarte said  his team mapped the ocean floor and found it was beginning to fracture, indicating tectonic activity around the apparently passive South West Iberia plate margin.

 

"What we have detected is the very beginnings of an active margin - it's like an embryonic subduction zone," Dr Duarte said.

 

Significant earthquake activity, including the 1755 quake which devastated Lisbon, suggested the existence of convergent tectonic movement in the area. Now it has been confirmed.

 

The incipient subduction in the Iberian zone could signal the start of a new phase of the Wilson Cycle - where plate movements break up supercontinents, like Pangaea, and open oceans, stabilise, and then form new subduction zones which close the oceans and bring the scattered continents back together.

 

This break-up and reformation of supercontinents has happened at least three times, over more than four billion years, on Earth. The Iberian subduction will gradually pull Iberia (Spain and Portugal) towards the United States over approximately 220 million years.

 
Read more: 
http://phys.org/news/2013-06-embryonic-subduction-zone.html
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2013/06/17/3783617.htm
Excellent article:  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2345104/A-new-crack-discovered-ocean-floor-pull-North-America-Europe--cause-Atlantic-Ocean-disappear-completely.html

Tectonic activities tend to produce earthquakes.  Any earthquake on the other side of the Atlantic can result in a tsunami travelling towards the American east coast.  There is a very active volcano in the Canary Islands (El Hierro), off the African coast. If there is a major eruption, a tidal wave may also head this way

http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2013/03/volcano-news-canary-islands-earthquake.html

 

RELATED:

SUBDUCTION ZONE explained, with illustration: 
http://www.universetoday.com/74588/what-is-a-subduction-zone/
 
Illustration showing the major fracture along the Atlantic Ocean:  
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130617104614.htm

MAP OF PANGEA with present political borders - Pangea was the last instance when all continents merged into one massive supercontinent. Pangea began breaking up 200 million years ago.

http://io9.com/heres-what-pangea-looks-like-mapped-with-modern-politi-509812695

Additional geology news on this blog: http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/search/label/Geology
Volcano news: 
http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/search/label/Volcanoes