Plate Tectonics of the Mediterranean
What is in this presentation?
Types of Plate Boundaries
Aegean Sea Plate
What is a Microplate?
A small movable segment of the earth's lithosphere much smaller than an ordinary tectonic plate.
The Anatolian and Aegean Sea Plates are considered MICROPLATES.
ARROWS show the direction the plates are moving.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/microplate
Aegean Sea Plate
Aegean Sea Plate
The Aegean Sea Plate (also called the Hellenic Plate or Aegean Plate) is a small tectonic plate located in the eastern Mediterranean Sea around southern Greece and far western Turkey. Its southern edge is a subduction zone south of Crete, where the African Plate is being swept under the Aegean Sea Plate.[1] To the north is the Eurasian Plate, which is a divergent boundary responsible for the formation of the Gulf of Corinth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegean_Sea_Plate
Aegean Sea Plate
Aegean Plate
Map of the Aegean plate and surroundings (Innocenti et al., 2010)
Anatolian Plate
The Anatolian Plate is in Turkey and shares a boundary with the Eurasian Plate, the African Plate, the Arabian Plate and the Aegean Sea Plate. This region is perhaps most well known for the North Anatolian Fault; the east-west striking continental transform fault situated in northern Turkey, which produces persistent earthquake activity along the fault.
The Anatolian Plate moves eastward, almost opposite to the African Plate, which moves northwest. There is a subduction zone along the Anatolian-African boundary where the African Plate is being subducted beneath both the Aegean and the Anatolian.
The boundary shared between the Arabian Plate and the Anatolian Plate is a continental transform fault similar to that of the North-Anatolian Transform Fault, which goes along the plate boundary between the Eurasian and the Anatolian Plate.
http://eurasiatectonics.weebly.com/anatolian-plate.html
Ophiolites and Mount Olympus
Ophiolites are pieces of oceanic plate that have been thrusted (or forced) onto the edge of continental plates. They expose the oceanic crust on the earth’s surface rather than under the ocean.
An example are the Troodos Mountains of Cyprus. The highest point of the Troodos Mountains is Mount Olympus.
Go here to find out more about the Troodos Mountains and Mount Olympus- http://www.troodos-geo.org/cgibin/hweb?-A=177&-V=troodos
What is Orogeny?
CONTINENTAL CONVERGENT BOUNDARY (USUALLY)
Orogens or orogenic belts develop when a continental plate is crumpled and is pushed upwards to form mountain ranges, and involve a great range of geological processes collectively called orogenesis. Orogeny is the primary way that mountains are built on continents. Convergence of two or more continents (collisional orogens).
Can also be formed by subduction (where a continent rides forcefully over an oceanic plate (non collisional orogens).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orogeny
Volcanic Arcs and Islands
Volcanic arcs are volcanic mountain ranges that form in subduction zones. They form a belt of stratovolcanoes on the continental side of a subduction zone. Mount Washington, pictured below, is a stratovolcano in the Cascade Range.
Island arcs are volcanic islands that form parallel to ocean trenches in subduction zones. The Pacific Ring of Fire is home to many of these groups of islands. Volcanoes that form above hot spots like the Hawaiian islands are not volcanic arcs.
RESOURCES:
http://sciencythoughts.blogspot.com/2012/05/earthquake-in-western-bulgaria.html