A. Which of the 7 coastal areas above (Ireland, New Zealand, Baja West Coast, Ba

Question

A. Which of the 7 coastal areas above (Ireland, New Zealand, Baja West Coast, Baja East Coast, Yucatan, Cape Cod, BC Canada) could be classified by the following terms? Be sure to explain each of your choices!

1. Active plate margin:

At this type of margin, plate tectonic motions are present nearby (within a few hundred kilometers); for example, a subduction zone creates an active plate margin with a relatively narrow continental shelf because oceanic and continental sediments are deposited into the trench and become part of the subduction process. Also, a nearby rift zone can create an uplifted coastal region; this is a different kind of active plate margin than a subduction zone and does apply to one of the areas above!

Which 3 coastal area(s) can be classified as being close (within a few 100 km) to an Active Plate Margin? Explain each.

a.

b.

c.

Explanation / Answer

a. New Zealand is classified as active plate margin. New Zealand straddles a subduction zone between the Pacific and Australian plates; where subduction is going in two opposite directions, stretching New Zealand with it. North Island rides atop the NW-moving Pacific Plate which is subducting beneath the Australian Plate.South Island is mostly in the tear-apart (transform or strike slip) fault zone, but further the south the SE-moving Australian plate subducts beneath the Pacific Plate. The climate is mild; warmer to the north and more seasonal to the south.

b.Cape Code is an active margin. The geologic history of Cape Cod mostly involves the advance and retreat of the last continental ice sheet (named the Laurentide after the Laurentian region of Canada where it first formed) and the rise in sea level that followed the retreat of the ice sheet. The sandy peninsula is the remnant of a huge terminal moraine, formed within the past 25,000 years. It remains an area of great geological interest because of its recent formation, and the effect that rising sea level is having on the sandy margins.

c) BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA. Most of the landscape from Alaska to California, and from the Pacific coast to the western edge of the Rockies either originated somewhere else, or formed in place as the “stuff from somewhere else” collided with ancestral North America. The BC coast of Canada is like that of Norway; a drowned coastline of former glacial troughs and river valleys.

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