Plate tectonics Intro: The word tectonic represents the meaning of plates and boundaries. As an example of activity is an earthquake, which is caused by two plates like the Eurasian and pacific plate pushing towards each other, pushing the land upwards causing a mountain as well as an earthquake. The plates are pieces of land that make up the outer crust, these could move together, move apart or move alongside each other resulting in mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes, this happens deep below the surface and as the earth is spinning and moving, the boundaries move also over millions of years.

Tectonics: There are four different types of plate boundaries; constructive, collision, destructive and conservative, earthquakes only happen close to all four of the boundaries, yet thy aren’t all the same, more earthquakes are more violent than others. Volcanic eruptions only happen at two of the boundaries, being more violent at one and gentle at another. A destructive margin is when the oceanic crust moves towards the continental crust, as the oceanic crust is heavier it is forced downwards then the pressure increases triggering an extremely violent earthquake.

A collision margin occurs when two plates from the continental crust cannot sink or be destroyed, as such are pushed upwards causing a mountain but can also cause severe earthquakes during the process. A constructive margin is where two plates move away from each other like the North American plate from the Eurasian plate causing the molten lava to erupt from the ground called a volcanic eruption can be extremely dangerous.

A conservative margin is when two plates try to slide pat each other slowly in the case of the north American and pacific plates, when the two plates, as often as they do on the notorious san andreas fault in California, pressure builds up when released it creates a severe earthquake. The difference between destructive and constructive margins is that destructive margins moves towards the continental crust causing it to go underneath it forcing the magma out if the volcano, yet the constructive margin tends to move away from a different plate which results in a volcano.

Destructive margins also cause volcanoes this is a similarity that the destructive margins also has to the constructive margins. The most dangerous boundary would be the destructive margin as not only does it form and erupt violent volcanoes but causing extremely violent and dangerous earthquakes that kill off almost everything within in its certain radius considering the size of the problem. Where in the world:

All of these natural disasters tend to happen closer to the plate boundaries for example; severe earthquakes on the san andreas it happens here because the fault in literally almost on the plate boundary line of the North American and the pacific plate. Also just recently an earthquake/tsunami happened in Japan and caused all sorts of disruptions such as the nuclear plant overheated and is now on the verge of poisoning half of Japan and is already affecting small children under 16 months who are no longer allowed to drink tap water.

The impacts of tectonic activity: The impacts of tectonic activity are commonly known as natural disasters as things like earthquakes and volcanoes are caused by tectonics which is naturally disturbed as the years go on for example Mount Etna is associated with the action of the African plate under the Eurasian plate, which also produced Vesuvius and Campi Flegrei, but is part of a different olcanic arc, also mount Pinatubo found In the Philippines is known as a stratovolcano which causes mostly ash clouds and lahars its largest eruption was in 1992 causing 772 deaths that’s as many people as there is in our school although these eruptions happen up to 3 times a day everyday all over the world.