What is the difference between a fracture zone and a transform fault?
The seismically active area of a fracture zone displacing the immediate vicinity of the spreading ridge segments is called a transform fault. The area that is more distant from the displaced spreading ridge segment and which is seismically inactive and older is called a fracture zone (FZ).
Are fracture zones associated with mid-ocean ridges?
Fracture zones exist as bathymetric features extending many hundreds of kilometers from the midocean ridge. Because of the offset of the midocean ridge spreading centers, the crust on one side of a fracture zone will be older and therefore colder, more contracted, and deeper than the crust on the other side.
What happens at fracture zones?
Fracture zones are the scars left in plate interiors by the action of transform faults that offset mid-ocean ridge segments. This transform faulting occurs at the ends of spreading segments where melt supply may be either reduced or enhanced, leading to crustal thickness contrasts across transform faults.
What happens at mid ridges during transform fault?
Most transform faults are found along the mid-ocean ridges. The ridge forms because two plates are pulling apart from each other. As this happens, magma from below the crust wells up, hardens, and forms new oceanic crust. This is the ridge.
What is the relationship between transform boundaries and mid-ocean ridges?
Transform boundaries exist where one plate slides past another without production or destruction of crustal material. As explained in section 4.5, most transform faults connect segments of mid-ocean ridges and are thus ocean-ocean plate boundaries. Some transform faults connect continental parts of plates.
What is the relationship between transform boundaries and mid-ocean ridges quizlet?
What is the relationship between transform boundaries and mid-ocean ridges? Transform boundaries connect segments of mid-ocean ridges. What is the relationship between the crust and the lithosphere? All of the crust is contained within a larger layer called the lithosphere.
Which fault goes with transform boundaries?
The San Andreas Fault and Queen Charlotte Fault are transform plate boundaries developing where the Pacific Plate moves northward past the North American Plate. The San Andreas Fault is just one of several faults that accommodate the transform motion between the Pacific and North American plates.
Do fracture zones near transform boundaries play?
Do fracture zones near transform boundaries play a role in plate motion? No, fracture zones play no role in plate motion.
What happens at mid-ocean ridges during transform fault?
What causes transform faults?
Transform plate boundaries produce enormous and deadly earthquakes. These quakes at transform faults are shallow focus. This is because the plates slide past each other without moving up or down. The San Andreas Fault that runs through much of California is an enormous transform plate boundary.
What determines the spacing of transform faults and fracture zones?
Spacing of transform faults intersecting mid-ocean ridges correlates with spreading rates: transform faults and fracture zones are more widely spaced in fast spreading centers like in the Pacific (600 ± 300 km) than in slow spreading centers like in the Atlantic (400 ± 200 km), while overlaps exist ( Macdonald, 1998 ).
What is a fracture zone in geology?
These scars, called fracture zones, were known as morphological features even before transform faults were recognized, and they correspond to the intra-plate traces of oceanic transform faults on the sides of mid-ocean ridges.
What is the relationship between fracture zones and oceanic crusts?
Because of the offset of the midocean ridge spreading centers, the crust on one side of a fracture zone will be older and therefore colder, more contracted, and deeper than the crust on the other side. The boundary between them is often a deep canyon. These are places where deeper levels of the oceanic crust are exposed.
Where do normal faulting events occur at mid-ocean ridges?
At the extensional mid-ocean ridges normal faulting events predominate at ridge segments ( Lay and Wallace, 1995 ), which according to Anderson means that on the horizontal plane the maximum principal stress is perpendicular to the strike of the transform fault.