Name:________________________________________
Use the figures and text in the books to complete each station.
Ring of Fire (p 233- 237)
1.
What is a plate?
2. What do you notice about the location of volcanoes, earthquakes and plate edges?
3. Label the major plates on the map below.
Divergent Ocean Boundary (p 238-241)
1. Ocean crust is made up of ( basalt / granite )
2. What feature forms where two ocean plates are separating? Label the diagram below with this
feature.
3. Color the oceanic plates gray. Label the plates with arrows to indicate the direction they are
moving.
4. What happens to the age of the ocean floor on either side of the ridge? Does it get older or
younger as you move away from the ridge?
5. What is interesting about the animal life found at these boundaries? (use your notes)
6. With the creation of crust constantly happening, why don’t we have a buildup of crust on our
planet?
Convergent Oceanic Boundary (refer to Figure 2.12 in chapter 2)
1.
Color the ocean crust gray and label the diagram below with three features created by this type
of boundary?
2. Which plate does the volcano form on the subducted plate or the floating plate?
3. What happens to the crust that has subducted? Read the text below the figure.
Convergent Oceanic and Continental Boundary(refer to Figure 2.11 in chapter 2)
1.
Color the ocean crust gray, continental crust blue and label the diagram below with three
features created by this type of boundary?
2. If lighter plates float and more dense plates sink or subduct, which type of plate is
denser…oceanic or continental.
3. Does the volcano form on the subducted plate or the floating plate?
4. Relative to each other, what direction are these plates moving? Label with arrows.
Sea Floor Model
1. Label on Fig B1 the convergent boundary with a star and the divergent boundary with a triangle.
Answer the questions below.
Ocean depth varies markedly from one location to another. Over large areas water depth is less than 200
m: in other areas the water depth is as great as 11,000. The average ocean depth is 3796m. For the next
questions you will be looking at a vertical cross section of the ocean floor. In places the ocean bottom is
almost flat and featureless whereas in other places the bottom consists of lofty ridges and volcanoes.
Three distinct ocean-bottom zones are evident. The zone closest to the shore features a gentle slope
extending seaward to a depth of 200m. From here to a depth of about 3000m, the water depth increases
more rapidly with distance. Then a relatively narrow zone is transitional from the steep slope of the
previous zone to the more-or-less flat ocean basin.
2. What are the names of the three zones of the ocean floor? Use the figure above to answer the
question.
These three zones together comprise the continental margin, as shown on the right side of Fig B1. This
term is appropriate because the bedrock of the continent ends at the end of the margin. At the outer
edge, the continental margin merges with the deep-sea floor or gives way to an oceanic trench. The right
and left portions of Fig B1 describe general characteristics of the ocean bottom in coastal areas that are
tectonically passive or active, respectively. Tectonically active areas are typically associated with plate
boundaries, experience relatively frequent earthquakes and/or volcanic activity.
3. Plate boudaries are more closely associated with the (EAST / WEST) coasts of the Americas. The
east coasts of N and S America, with there generally broad continental margins as shown on the
( RIGHT / LEFT ) side of FIG 1B are tectonically passive. The (EAST / WEST) coasts of the
Americas with narrow continental margins are shown on the ( RIGHT / LEFT ) of the same figure are
tectonically active.
Plot the topographical/ depth data on the graph below. Answer the questions that follow.