Transform

Fault
 Ridge-ridge Transform Fault
• Connects two segments of a divergent
plate boundary
• By far the most abundant
• Faults cuts through the entire lithosphere
• Active displacement occurs only between
the ridge segments
• Plate movements are in opposite
directions between the ridge crests.
• Sustain formidable shearing movement
• Example: Dead Sea transform system
Ridge-trench Transform Fault
• Connects a ridge and a trench
• Much less common
• Longest transform faults are all of
this kind
• Forms an important connection
between spreading and converging
plates
• Example: Queen Charlotte Island
Fault of the Western Coast of
Canada
Trench-trench Transform Fault
• A couple trenches at two
different convergent plate
boundaries.
• Rare
• Example: Alphine Fault in New
Zealand
Triple Junction
• The point at which three plate
boundaries meet is called a triple
junction.
• At this boundary, one of three types
– ridge, trench, or transform – are
involved.
Triple Junction
• Are described and assessed using the properties of the ridges,
trenches, and faults that are involved in the junction.
• Geologists use the notation R (ridge), T (trench), and Fault (F) to
catalogue
1. RRR – Exists when three plates are moving apart
2. TTT – Three plates that are pushing together
3. FFF – Impossible to occur
 Mechanism of Plate Tectonics
• Seismic tomography is a
technique of inverting
seismological data to
retrieve a three-
dimensional image of
the anomalies in seismic
wave velocity within the
media they cross.
There are three major thoughts that were
raised to explain the mechanism of plates
•Mantle Convection Theory
•Slab Pull Theory
•Ridge Push Theory
 Mantle Convection Theory
• This theory was proposed by Arthur Holmes in 1929. Using
Wegener’s observations.

• Holmes suggested that as the mantle became heated, its density

increases and eventually rises up. He added that when the
material cooled, it would sink, exhibiting a circling behavior that
he described like a conveyor belt.

• According to Holmes, the pressure of heated magma broke the

continents apart, forcing the pieces to drift in opposite
directions.
As presented in
the conveyor belt
model, tectonic
plates are moved
passively by
convection
currents in
Earth’s mantle.
 Slab Pull Theory
• This theory states that gravity and the plates themselves are the
ones responsible for the plate tectonics through subduction
process.

• Subduction zones exist at the outer edge of plates.

• In these zones, rocks are older, hence they are cooler and
denser compared to those located at the inner layers.

• The old rock or slabs subduct or sink into the mantle below it,
due to gravitation force.
 Ridge push 
• Ridge push (also known as gravitational sliding) or sliding plate
force is a proposed driving force for plate motion in plate tectonics that
occurs at mid-ocean ridges as the result of the rigid lithosphere sliding
down the hot, raised asthenosphere below mid-ocean ridges.

• Although it is called ridge push, the term is somewhat misleading; it is

actually a body force that acts throughout an ocean plate, not just at
the ridge, as a result of gravitational pull. The name comes from
earlier models of plate tectonics in which ridge push was primarily
ascribed to upwelling magma at mid-ocean ridges pushing or wedging
the plates apart.