(54).Transport plate boundaries.

What could cause such an enormous scar on the land?

A transform plate boundary! As we continue up the West Coast, we move from a divergent plate boundary to a transform plate boundary. As in Iceland, where we could walk across a short bridge connecting two continental plates, we could walk from the Pacific Plate to the North American plate across this transform plate boundary. In this image, the San Andreas Fault across central California is the gash that indicates the plate boundary.

Transform Plate Boundaries

With transform plate boundaries, the two slabs of lithosphere are sliding past each other in opposite directions. The boundary between the two plates is a transform fault.

Transform Faults On Land

Transform faults on continents separate two massive plates of lithosphere. As they slide past each other, they may have massive earthquakes.

The San Andreas Fault in California is perhaps the world’s most famous transform fault. Land on the west side is moving northward relative to land on the east side. This means that Los Angeles is moving northward relative to Palm Springs. The San Andreas Fault is famous because it is the site of many earthquakes, large and small. (Figurebelow).

[Figure 1]

At the San Andreas Fault in California, the Pacific Plate is sliding northeast relative to the North American plate, which is moving southwest. At the northern end of the picture, the transform boundary turns into a subduction zone.

Transform plate boundaries are also found in the oceans. They divide mid-ocean ridges into segments. In the diagram of western North America, the mid-ocean ridge up at the top, labeled the Juan de Fuca Ridge, is broken apart by a transform fault in the oceans. A careful look will show that different plates are found on each side of the ridge: the Juan de Fuca plate on the east side and the Pacific Plate on the west side.

Summary

A transform plate boundary divides two plates that are moving in opposite direction from each other.

On land, transform faults are the site of massive earthquakes because they are where large slabs of lithosphere slide past each other.

Transform faults in the oceans break mid-ocean ridges into segments.