The Rio Grande rift is a north-trending continental rift zone. It separates the Colorado Plateau in the west from the interior of the North American craton on the east. The rift extends from central Colorado in the north to the state of Chihuahua, Mexico, in the south. The rift zone consists of four basins that have an average width of 50 kilometres (31 mi). The rift can be observed on location at Rio Grande National Forest, White Sands National Park, Santa Fe National Forest, and Cibola National Forest, among other locations.
An aulacogen is a failed arm of a triple junction. Aulacogens are a part of plate tectonics where oceanic and continental crust is continuously being created, destroyed, and rearranged on the Earth’s surface. Rift zones are places where new crust is formed. An aulacogen is a rift zone that is no longer active.
In physical geography and geology, a horst is a raised fault block bounded by normal faults. Horsts are typically found together with grabens. While a horst is lifted or remains stationary, the grabens on either side subside. This is often caused by extensional forces pulling apart the crust. Horsts may represent features such as plateaus, mountains, or ridges on either side of a valley. Horsts can range in size from small fault blocks up to large regions of stable continent that have not been folded or warped by tectonic forces.
In geology, a rift is a linear zone where the lithosphere is being pulled apart and is an example of extensional tectonics. Typical rift features are a central linear downfaulted depression, called a graben, or more commonly a half-graben with normal faulting and rift-flank uplifts mainly on one side. Where rifts remain above sea level they form a rift valley, which may be filled by water forming a rift lake. The axis of the rift area may contain volcanic rocks, and active volcanism is a part of many, but not all, active rift systems.
The Los Angeles Basin is a sedimentary basin located in Southern California, in a region known as the Peninsular Ranges. The basin is also connected to an anomalous group of east-west trending chains of mountains collectively known as the Transverse Ranges. The present basin is a coastal lowland area, whose floor is marked by elongate low ridges and groups of hills that is located on the edge of the Pacific Plate. The Los Angeles Basin, along with the Santa Barbara Channel, the Ventura Basin, the San Fernando Valley, and the San Gabriel Basin, lies within the greater Southern California region. The majority of the jurisdictional land area of the city of Los Angeles physically lies within this basin.
The New Madrid Seismic Zone (NMSZ), sometimes called the New Madrid Fault Line, is a major seismic zone and a prolific source of intraplate earthquakes in the Southern and Midwestern United States, stretching to the southwest from New Madrid, Missouri.
In structural geology, an anticline is a type of fold that is an arch-like shape and has its oldest beds at its core, whereas a syncline is the inverse of an anticline. A typical anticline is convex up in which the hinge or crest is the location where the curvature is greatest, and the limbs are the sides of the fold that dip away from the hinge. Anticlines can be recognized and differentiated from antiforms by a sequence of rock layers that become progressively older toward the center of the fold. Therefore, if age relationships between various rock strata are unknown, the term antiform should be used.
The Midcontinent Rift System (MRS) or Keweenawan Rift is a 2,000 km (1,200 mi) long geological rift in the center of the North American continent and south-central part of the North American Plate. It formed when the continent's core, the North American craton, began to split apart during the Mesoproterozoic era of the Precambrian, about 1.1 billion years ago. The rift failed, leaving behind thick layers of igneous rock that are exposed in its northern reaches, but buried beneath later sedimentary formations along most of its western and eastern arms. Those arms meet at Lake Superior, which is contained within the rift valley. The lake's north shore in Ontario and Minnesota defines the northern arc of the rift. From the lake, the rift's eastern arm trends south to central lower Michigan, and possibly into Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Alabama. The western arm runs from Lake Superior southwest through portions of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Nebraska to northeastern Kansas, and possibly into Oklahoma.
The Humboldt Fault or Humboldt Fault Zone, is a normal fault or series of faults, that extends from Nebraska southwestwardly through most of Kansas.
The Baikal Rift Zone is a series of continental rifts centered beneath Lake Baikal in southeastern Russia. Current strain in the rifts tends to be extending with some shear movement. A series of basins form along the zone for more than 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi), creating a rift valley. The rifts form between the Eurasian Plate to the west and the Amur Plate to the east.
The Afar Triple Junction is located along a divergent plate boundary dividing the Nubian, Somali, and Arabian plates. This area is considered a present-day example of continental rifting leading to seafloor spreading and producing an oceanic basin. Here, the Red Sea Rift meets the Aden Ridge and the East African Rift. The latter extends a total of 6,500 kilometers (4,000 mi) from the Afar Triangle to Mozambique.
The Olympic–Wallowa lineament (OWL) is a series of geologic structures oriented from northwest to southeast for 650 km (400 mi) across Washington and northeast Oregon in the United States, passing through the Seattle area and including notable features east of the Cascade Range such as the Yakima Fold Belt and Wallowa Mountains. It was first reported by cartographer Erwin Raisz in 1945 on a relief map of the continental United States. Some geologists have questioned the existence of a geological relationship between the individual structures along the lineament suggesting it is an optical illusion. The origin of this feature in its entirety is not well understood with multiple hypotheses on the subject. The Olympic–Wallowa lineament likely predates the Columbia River Basalt Group.
This is a list of articles related to plate tectonics and tectonic plates.
The Cheshire Basin is a late Palaeozoic and Mesozoic sedimentary basin extending under most of the county of Cheshire in northwest England. It extends northwards into the Manchester area and south into Shropshire. The basin possesses something of the character of a half-graben as its deepest extent is along its eastern and southeastern margins, where it is well defined by a series of sub-parallel faults, most important of which is the Red Rock Fault. These faults divide the basin from the older Carboniferous rocks of the Peak District and the North Staffordshire Coalfield.
The 1867 Manhattan earthquake struck Riley County, Kansas, in the United States on April 24, 1867, at 20:22 UTC, or about 14:30 local time. The strongest earthquake to originate in the state, it measured 5.1 on a seismic scale that is based on an isoseismal map or the event's felt area. The earthquake's epicenter was near the town of Manhattan.
The Puget Sound faults under the heavily populated Puget Sound region of Washington state form a regional complex of interrelated seismogenic (earthquake-causing) geologic faults. These include the:
The Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen is a failed rift, or failed rift arm (aulacogen), of the triple junction that became the Iapetus Ocean spreading ridges. It is a significant geological feature in the Western and Southern United States. It formed sometime in the early to mid Cambrian Period and spans the Wichita Mountains, Taovayan Valley, Anadarko Basin, and Hardeman Basin in Southwestern Oklahoma. The Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen is primarily composed of basaltic dikes, gabbros, and units of granitic rock.
The offshore Indus Basin is one of the two basins in offshore Pakistan, the other one being the offshore Makran Basin. The Murray Ridge separates the two basins. The offshore Indus basin is approximately 120 to 140 kilometers wide and has an areal extent of ~20,000 square km.
The geological deformation of Iceland is the way that the rocks of the island of Iceland are changing due to tectonic forces. The geological deformation help to explain the location of earthquakes, volcanoes, fissures, and the shape of the island. Iceland is the largest landmass situated on an oceanic ridge. It is an elevated plateau of the sea floor, situated at the crossing of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Greenland-Iceland-Scotland ridge. It lies along the oceanic divergent plate boundary of North American Plate and Eurasian Plate. The western part of Iceland sits on the North American Plate and the eastern part sits on the Eurasian Plate. The Reykjanes Ridge of the Mid-Atlantic ridge system in this region crosses the island from southwest and connects to the Kolbeinsey Ridge in the northeast.
Meers Fault is a fault in Oklahoma that extends from Kiowa County to Comanche County. It is marked by a 22–26 kilometers (14–16 mi) long conspicuous fault scarp but the fault extends beyond the ends of this scarp. The Meers fault is part of a group of faults that lie between the Anadarko Basin and the Wichita Mountains.
