Subduction Zone : Study
A recent study by scientists in Portugal predicts the ‘Ring of Fire’ subduction zone beneath the Gibraltar Strait may lead to the Atlantic Ocean’s closure in 20 million years.
- Subduction Zone is a spot where two of the planet’s tectonic plates collide and one dives, or subducts, beneath the other.
- Tectonic plates are pieces of the Earth’s rigid outer layer that slowly move across the planet’s surface over millions of years.
- This is the main tenet of plate tectonics, the theory that portions of Earth’s shell glide over the lower mantle, taking continents with them.
- That outer layer, known as the lithosphere, consists of the Earth’s crust and the upper section of the mantle, a dense, hot layer beneath the crust.
- When two tectonic plates meet at a subduction zone and one slide underneath the other, this lithosphere material curves down into the hot mantle.
