By: Mitchell Anderson and Nick Sierpien

 Divergent Plates  Convergent Plates  Continental Plates  Transform Boundaries  Hot Spots

At convergent boundaries, plates collide and interact, producing features including trenches, volcanoes, and mountain ridges. Along the older portion of convergent boundaries the plates return to the mantle. Earths total surface area can remain the same, even though new lithosphere is “destroyed” at convergent boundaries, they are also called destructive plate margins. As two plates slowly converge, the leading of one is bent downward, allowing it to slide beneath the other. At destructive plate margins, oceanic crust is subducted into the mantle. Convergent plates are located between the Eurasian and North American plates.

Hot spots are volcanic regions that are thought to be being fed by the mantle underneath them. One of these hot spots are thought to be under Hawaii’s islands. These hot spots can be found most every where in the world another example is Fiji. Most places where hot spots are it is very beautiful mostly in part of all the new rich soil the hot spots disperse very often.

Most divergent boundaries move apart from each other. In some cases divergent boundaries are called spreading centers. When spreading centers form on land the can literally split the land above them. This are is part of the reason that Pangaea split into multiple pieces.

Transform plate boundaries are boundaries that rub against each other horizontally. Another name for this boundary is a strike-slip fault. Most transform faults join two segments of a mid ocean ridge. Most of these boundaries are located within ocean basins. One example of this is the San Andreas fault in California.

The Continental margin is the zone between a continent and the adjacent ocean basin. The Continental slope is the gently sloping submerged surface extending from the shoreline. This is often found in different parts of the Atlantic ocean.