Plate boundary facts for kids

Further information: Plate tectonics

Three types of plate boundary.

The major types of plate boundaries are:

1. Spreading boundaries. Mid-Atlantic Ridge and Africa's Great Rift Valley are examples. Rift valleys, mountains (orogeny), volcanoes.
2. Collision boundaries. These collide, forming a subduction zone (West coast of the Americas) or a continental collision (India with Asia). Mountains (orogeny), valleys, volcanoes.
3. Transform or fault boundaries. Here plates grind past each other along transform faults. Earthquakes, volcanoes,
4. Conservative boundaries: little or no relative motion

All boundaries except the conservative ones are sites of major geological activity. We have plate boundaries on the earth.

Images for kids

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  Plate motion based on Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite data from NASA JPL. Each red dot is a measuring point and vectors show direction and magnitude of motion.

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  Alfred Wegener in Greenland in the winter of 1912–13.

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  Global earthquake epicenters, 1963–1998. Most earthquakes occur in narrow belts that correspond to the locations of lithospheric plate boundaries.

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  Plate tectonics map