MichelleExampleForYou

=The Antarctic Plate = = = The Antarctic plate circles the entire bottom of the southern pole. Antarctic Plate has boundaries with the Nazca Plate, the South American Plate, the African Plate, the Indo-Australian Plate, the Scotia Plate, and a divergent boundary with the Pacific Plate forming the Pacific Antarctic Ridge. The Antarctica plate is mostly asesmic and moves little relative to other plates. About 95% of the edge of the plate is a divergent (spreading) plate boundary.


 * __Antarctic/Pacific Boundary__: The Antarctic plate hasn’t moved much in the last 10 million years. Pressure from the Pacific plate is resisted, with subduction taking place at the edge. At this divergent boundary between the two plates a growth of new rock occurs. As these two plates move further apart, the Antarctic plate forms new rock islands.

__Antarctic/Australian Boundary__: On the opposite side of Antarctica, the spreading seafloor is increasing the overall boundary against the Australian plate. || Antarctic volcanoes are located along the margins of large  [|rift systems]. · Mount Erebus (elevation: 12,444 feet, 3,794 m) is on Ross Island in the Ross Sea. Erebus has been a continuously active volcano since 1972. Mount Erebus from across Mc Murdo Sound.



· Mount Melbourne in North Victoria Land still has steam vents. · Mount Discovery was formed about five million years ago and has several volcanic domes on the north side of the mountain. · Mount Harcourt and three shield volcanoes make up the Hallett Peninsula that extends into the Ross Sea. · The south end of the island has the world’s southernmost land accessible by ship. · North of the Antarctic Peninsula, three chains of islands have active volcanoes. · The East Scotia Sea has two north-south zones where new crust is being formed underwater. · Numerous active vents are situated close to the shoreline of the natural harbor. · Two peaks were created by an eruption in the late 1960’s. The most recent eruption was in 1991.
 * //Photograph by Rick Moscati, 1990.//**

· December 24, 2004 earthquake of a magnitude of 8.1 struck 1,000 miles southwest of New Zealand between Australia and Antarctica. · Magnitude 8--in the Balleny Islands, south from the Pole toward New Zealand between the coast and the plate boundary on the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge. · There is also a line of seismicity off the west coast of the Antarctic Peninsula and some activity in the Kerguelen Plateau. · The March 25, 1998 Antarctic plate earthquake ruptured a portion of the Antarctic plate more than 200 km west of its boundary with the Australian plate · On March 28, 1988 an earthquake of 8.6 magnitude occurred on the southeast portion of the boundary. . This was not an aftershock, but a new rupture of an adjacent segment of the fault.
 * There have been some big earthquakes:**

http://earthquakes.usgs.gov/learning/faq.php?categoryID=1&faqID=140&nextRow=previous http://www.n-d-a.org/earthquake.php [|http://www.thewe.cc/weplanet/poles][|/antarcti/volcanoe.html]
 * The interior of Antarctica has ice quakes.** The ice quakes are similar to earthquakes, but occur within the ice sheet itself instead of the land underneath the ice.
 * Web sites used:**