Difference Between Subduction And Sea Floor Spreading

This report describes how to build a model of the outer 300 km 180 miles of the earth that can be used to develop a better understanding of the principal features of plate tectonics including sea floor spreading the pattern of magnetic stripes frozen into the sea floor transform faulting thrust faulting subduction and volcanism.

Difference between subduction and sea floor spreading.

Subduction is when there is a convergent plate boundary and one of plates subducts below the other one. Sea floor spreading occurs at a divergent plate boundary in the ocean of course here the two plates are moving away from each other and lava is able to escape from the mantle creating new geologic features. Old ocean floor is destroyed by subduction at deep sea trenches. Sea floor spreading is where new oceanic crust is formed through volcanic activity and then moves away from the ridge.

In a convection current the cooler material sinks back down. As upwelling of magma continues the plates continue to diverge a process known as seafloor spreading samples collected from the ocean floor show that the age of oceanic crust increases with distance from the spreading centre important evidence in favour of this process. The area is a subduction zone. The denser lithospheric material then melts back into the earth s mantle.

Subduction happens where tectonic plates crash into each other instead of spreading apart. In a convection current the hot material rises to the surface when the material reaches the surface it starts to cool off and spread out. Seafloor spreading is just one part of plate tectonics. It happens on both sides of the ridg.

At subduction zones the edge of the denser plate subducts or slides beneath the less dense one. Sea floor spreading is caused by a ridge expansion zone opening in the earths crust where new magma lava rises up and adds to the sea floor. These age data also allow the rate of seafloor spreading to be determined and they show that rates. In 1965 a canadian geophysicist j.

The area is a subduction zone. As each new centimeter is added and cools another takes its place. Tuzo said that earth s crust or lithosphere was divided into large rigid pieces called plates. New sea floor is created by the upwelling of magma at mid ocean spreading centers.

The cooler denser mantle sinks causing subduction and the hotter mantle rises to the surface causing sea floor spreading. Tuzo wilson combined the continental drift and seafloor spreading hypotheses to propose the theory of plate tectonics. Subduction is when one tectonic plate moves under another tectonic plate.