What Tectonic Plate Is Easter Island Located On?

by | Last updated on January 24, 2024

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Easter and Sala y Gomez Islands lie on

the Nazca plate in

the Eastern Pacific on a zone of high topography known as the Sala y Gomez Ridge (Figure 1).

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Is Easter Island a divergent plate boundary?

The Easter plate is a small oceanic plate in an area of locally anomalous sea-floor spreading activity that internally disrupts the tectonic continuity of the

Nazca-Pacific divergent plate boundary

west of Easter Island.

Is Easter Island on the Nazca plate?

Easter Microplate Movement

1

East
Speed

1

50 to 140 millimetres (2.0 to 5.5 in)/yr
Features Bordering: Pacific Plate (west) Nazca Plate (east)

What type of plate boundary is the Nazca plate?

The Nazca plate is an oceanic in the southeastern Pacific Ocean that shares

both convergent and divergent boundaries

, corners multiple triple junctions, contains three seamount chains, overrides four hotspots, and is responsible for the creation of the Andean orogeny (Figure 1).

Where is Easter Island located at?

Easter Island (Rapa Nui: Rapa Nui; Spanish: Isla de Pascua) is an island and special territory of

Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean

, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania.

What type of plate boundary exists on a certain island?


Convergent boundaries

: where two plates are colliding.

Island arcs and oceanic trenches occur when both of the plates are made of oceanic crust. Zones of active seafloor spreading can also occur behind the island arc, known as back-arc basins.

Is Easter Island volcanic?

Easter Island is a

volcanic island

located a few hundred kilometers east of the planet's fastest oceanic spreading center.

What type of plate boundary occurs between the North American and Eurasian plates?

The Mid Atlantic Ridge, like other ocean ridge systems, has developed as a consequence of the

divergent motion

between the Eurasian and North American, and African and South American Plates.

What tectonic plate is Europe on?


The Eurasian Plate

is a tectonic plate which includes most of the continent of Eurasia (a landmass consisting of the traditional continents of Europe and Asia), with the notable exceptions of the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian subcontinent, and the area east of the Chersky Range in East Siberia.

Where do Nazca plate and Pacific plate can be formed?

There is a divergent boundary between the Nazca Plate and the Pacific Plate. This occurs at the

western side of the Nazca Plate and the eastern side of the Pacific plate

that forms the East Pacific Rise.

Is the Antarctic Plate oceanic or continental?

The Antarctic Plate includes

continental crust

making up Antarctica and its continental shelf, along with oceanic crust beneath the seas surrounding Antarctica.

What type of plate boundary is the Indo Australian plate and Eurasian Plate?

About 50 million years ago, the Indian Plate and Eurasian Plate began colliding into each other lifting the Himalayan mountain range. To this day, these

convergent plate boundaries

are still uplifting building new mountain.

What type of plate boundary is Antarctic and Australian plate?

The southerly side is

a divergent boundary

with the Antarctic Plate called the Southeast Indian Ridge (SEIR). The subducting boundary through Indonesia is not parallel to the biogeographical Wallace line that separates the indigenous fauna of Asia from that of Australasia.

What climate does Easter Island have?

Climate – Easter Island

The climate of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is

subtropical, warm and humid in summer and mild in winter

, in fact, the average daily temperature ranges from 23/24 °C (74/75 °F) in the period from January to March to 18.5/19 °C (65/66 °F) in the period from July to September.

Who made the moai?

The Easter Island heads are known as Moai by

the Rapa Nui people

who carved the figures in the tropical South Pacific directly west of Chile. The Moai monoliths, carved from stone found on the island, are between 1,100 and 1,500 CE.

What type of plate boundary exist on a certain island if that island is considered as a volcanic island arc?

Island arcs are long chains of active volcanoes with intense seismic activity found along

convergent tectonic plate boundaries

(such as the Ring of Fire). Most island arcs originate on oceanic crust and have resulted from the descent of the lithosphere into the mantle along the subduction zone.

What are the different types of plate tectonic boundaries?

Movement in narrow zones along plate boundaries causes most earthquakes. Most seismic activity occurs at three types of plate boundaries—

divergent, convergent, and transform

. As the plates move past each other, they sometimes get caught and pressure builds up.

How was Easter Island formed?

An isolated triangle measuring 14 miles long by seven miles wide, Easter Island was formed

by a series of volcanic eruptions

. In addition to its hilly terrain, the island contains many subterranean caves with corridors that extend deep into mountains of volcanic rock.

What type of plate boundary exists on a certain island if you can find a Mid oceanic Ridge?

Most

active divergent plate boundaries

occur between oceanic plates and exist as mid-oceanic ridges. Divergent boundaries also form volcanic islands, which occur when the plates move apart to produce gaps that magma rises to fill.

What type of volcanoes are on Easter Island?

Rano Kau is a 324 m (1,063 ft)

tall dormant volcano

that forms the southwestern headland of Easter Island, a Chilean island in the Pacific Ocean. It was formed of basaltic lava flows in the Pleistocene with its youngest rocks dated at between 150,000 and 210,000 years ago.

How many volcanoes make up Easter Island?

The triangle-shaped Easter Island, renowned for its dramatic megalithic statues of hand-carved basalt, sits atop the Sala y Gómez submarine ridge, which trends eastward from the East Pacific Rise. The island is composed of

three principal volcanoes

, Poike, Rano Kau, and Terevaka.

What plate boundaries are Antarctic and South American plates?

The two longest boundaries—those with the Antarctic and South American plates—are both

sinistral strike-slip boundaries

(Thomas et al., 2003). The southern border with the Antarctic plate, known as the South Scotia Ridge, moves with a rate of 7.5-9.5 mm/yr.

Where is the Antarctic plate located?

The Antarctic plate encompasses

the continent of Antarctica and surrounding oceanic crust

. It is the southernmost plate and is centered over the South Pole, with the Scotia, South Sandwich, Shetland, Nazca, African, Australian, Pacific, and South American plates all bordering it to the north.

What type of tectonic plate is the North American Plate?

North American Plate Type

Major
Approximate area 75,900,000 km

2

(29,300,000 sq mi)
Movement

1

west
Speed

1

15–25 mm (0.59–0.98 in)/year

What plate is South Pole on?


Antarctic Plate
Features Antarctica, Southern Ocean
1

Relative to the African Plate

What tectonic plate is UK on?

The British Isles sits in the middle of a tectonic plate,

Eurasia

. Our nearest plate boundary is at the mid-Atlantic ridge, where the earthquakes are too small to generate tsunami.

Is the Australian plate convergent or divergent?

The Hikurangi tectonic plate boundary is a

convergent boundary

. This means that the Australian and Pacific plates are pushing against each other.

What type of plate boundary occurs between the Pacific and Philippine plate?

The Philippine Sea Plate. The Philippine Sea plate is tectonically unusual in that almost all the boundaries are

convergent

. The Pacific plate is subducting beneath the Philippine Sea plate to the east while the west/northwestern part of the Philippine Sea plate is subducting beneath the continental Eurasian plate.

Is the Antarctic Plate convergent divergent or transform?

The Antarctic Plate has a very large system of boundaries on its perimeter which include

convergent, divergent, and transform boundaries

.

Is the North American plate convergent or divergent?

Near Alaska, the North American Plate meets the Pacific Plate in

a convergent boundary

, meaning the plates are coming together. Here, the Pacific Plate sinks under the North American Plate in a process called subduction. As the Pacific Plate subducts, some pieces of the crust scrape off onto the North American Plate.

Is the Pacific Plate convergent or divergent?

It has a

divergent boundary

with the Explorer Plate off the west coast of Vancouver Island, Canada. The eastern and southeastern parts of the Pacific Plate jostles against the Juan de Fuca, Cocos, and Nazca Plates, which are subducting under the North American Plate.

Is Antarctic plate a major tectonic plate?

The Antarctic Plate is

one of Earth's 7 major plate tectonic boundaries

. … Not only does the Antarctic Plate contains the entire continent of Antarctic, but it includes most of the surrounding ocean. In addition, it borders the South American Plate, Indo-Australian Plate, African Plate and the Pacific Plate.

Which plates are oceanic and continental?

An example of an oceanic plate is

the Pacific Plate

, which extends from the East Pacific Rise to the deep-sea trenches bordering the western part of the Pacific basin. A continental plate is exemplified by the North American Plate, which includes North America as well as the oceanic crust…

Is the Philippine plate oceanic or continental?

The Philippine Sea Plate or the Philippine Plate is a tectonic plate comprising

oceanic lithosphere

that lies beneath the Philippine Sea, to the east of the Philippines.

Where are the tectonic plates in Australia?


Australia doesn't sit on the edge of a tectonic plate

. However, the Indo-Australian plate, at the centre of which our continent lies, is being pushed to the north-east at about 7cm per year. It's colliding with the Eurasian, Philippine and Pacific plates, causing stress to build up in the 25km-thick upper crust.

What is the geography of Easter Island?

Easter Island is

a volcanic island formed by multiple emissions of lava from its three main volcanoes

, which gave rise to a single triangular continental mass with a maximum length of 24 Km and a maximum width of 12Km.

Is Easter Island in the tropics?

Easter Island

enjoys a sub-tropical climate

, and is therefore a year-round destination. … The official language of Easter Island is Spanish, but most of the Rapanui speak Rapa Nui, a Polynesian language closely related to Tahitian.

What is Isla de Pascua?


Easter Island

, Spanish Isla de Pascua, also called Rapa Nui, Chilean dependency in the eastern Pacific Ocean. It is the easternmost outpost of the Polynesian island world. It is famous for its giant stone statues.

Emily Lee
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Emily Lee
Emily Lee is a freelance writer and artist based in New York City. She’s an accomplished writer with a deep passion for the arts, and brings a unique perspective to the world of entertainment. Emily has written about art, entertainment, and pop culture.