GEOL 410:

Petroleum Geology

Module 1:
PLATE TECTONICS
Relate plate tectonics to the location of sedimentary basins.

Associate the Earth’s structure with key aspects of our planet including the
magnetic field, atmosphere, and lithospheric plates

Review the theory of Plate Tectonics

Differentiate between passive and active continental margins.

Associate plate boundaries with geologic activities like volcanoes and

earthquakes

Examine the location of geographic features and the distribution of life on Earth
in terms of the plate tectonics theory.
Plate Tectonics

• Controls the distribution of rocks and minerals,

• and therefore the distribution of saleable natural resources mined or extracted
• Influences climates by influencing sea level, albedo, and ocean currents
• And therefore influences life on the planet including the distribution of plants and animals
• Predicts the distribution of geologic hazards

• Plate tectonics is a theory explaining the motion of crustal plates over the Earth’s surface

• Plate tectonics can be described as the composite of a variety of ideas that explain the
observed motions of Earth's lithosphere through the mechanisms of subduction and
seafloor spreading, which in turn, generate Earth's major geographic and geologic features,
including continents and ocean basins.
• The implications of plate tectonics are so far-reaching that this theory has become the
foundation to our understanding of most geological processes.
LECTURE SUMMARY
Plate Tectonics
• Earth’s structure
• Parts
• Relationships
• Data
• Magnetic Field
• Plates
• Movement mechanism and direction
• Boundaries
• Diverging (Sea Floor Spreading)
• Converging (Subduction)
• Transform

• Implications
• Passive Margins
• Volcanoes
The Earth’s Interior: Crust

• Crust mineralogy reflects its formation and

history
• Oceanic crust is formed by
uncontaminated mantle material
• Iron rich (mafic) and dense (approx. 3 g/cc)
• 6-12 km thick
• Most ocean crust is < 200 million years old
as it is constantly being formed and recycled
• Continental crust is formed as a mixture of
mantle material and continental crust
• Silica rich (felsic) and relatively low density
(approx. 2- 2.7 g/cc)
• 30-70 km thick
• Has been forming for about 2 billion years
and is rarely destroyed
Retrieved from Physical Geology - H5P Edition Copyright © 2021 by Karla Panchuk, licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
Isostasy (the crust ‘floats’ on the mantle)

• Young/newly formed crust is

warmer and therefore less
dense
• The mantle deforms
plastically over geologic time
• Isostasy is the balance of
gravity and buoyancy
Isostasy: A Canadian Example
How do we know what is inside the Earth?
The Earth’s Interior Heat

• Convection (rock is an
excellent insulator) occurs
• Conduction occurs
• Radioactive decay occurs
The Earth’s Interior: Core and Magnetic Field

• The Earth has a solid inner core and liquid outer

core comprised mainly of iron (80%) and nickel
• Temperature estimated at 5,430°Celsius
• Pressure estimated at 3.6 million atmospheres
• The inner core is solid and outer core is liquid
(think of the pressures here)
• The movement of liquid metal around the solid
metal core (as the Earth rotates) creates a
magnetic field – a geo-dynamo
• When igneous rocks form the magnetic field
they are influenced by remains with them unless
they are heated above their Curie Point (about
580°C)
• Meaning the rocks while have a paleomagnetic
record of the latitude at which they formed, aiding
us in reconstruction of plate movements
What is a plate?

• Plates are portions of the Earth’s

crust that move as rigid bodies
• Rates of motion range from <1cm/yr
to 10cm/y, average plate motion is
about 67mm/yr
• Different portions of plates may move
at different rates causing them to
rotate
• Plates can be a combination of
continental and ocean crust
• Plates move towards each other,
away from each other, or alongside
one another
Plate Boundaries
Seafloor Spreading:
The discovery of Plate Tectonic mechanisms
• During WWII, it was learned that the sea floor was
not flat
• the mid-Atlantic ridge is one of the largest
mountain ranges on the planet – it runs parallel to
the continental margins on both sides of the
Atlantic ocean. Further, the ridge contains a
central valley, has high heat flow and extensive
volcanic activity
• Flat-topped mountains called seamounts were
mapped hundreds of metres below sea level that
showed signs of formerly being islands that are
now submerged
• dredging of the seafloor yielded rocks no older
than 180 million years
• This discovery allowed us to understand a
mechanism behind the observation of plate
movements
Plate Tectonics: Driving Mechanisms

• Convective heat system • https://study.com/academy/l

• Radioactive decay in Earth's interior
esson/video/how-density-bu
• Additional heat comes from the core oyancy-affect-plate-tectonics
.html
• Slab-pull
(5:56)
• Descending lithosphere pulls plate along
(mantle convection) • https://study.com/academy/l
esson/video/plate-tectonics-
• Ridge-push and-the-location-of-mineral-d
• Rising magma (mantle convection) and eposits.html
gravity push the lithosphere out from the
mid-ocean ridge
(7:33)
Types of plate boundaries

• As the tectonic plates move, they interact with other plates. There are three types of plate
boundaries:

• Transform - The plates slide horizontally past each other. Crust is neither produced nor
destroyed.

• Divergent - The plates diverge or move away from each other. New crust is generated between
the diverging plates.

• Convergent - The plates move toward one another and collide. Crust is destroyed as one plate
is pushed beneath another.
Map and Cross-section view of an Ocean Ridge
How long will an ocean grow?

• The ‘supercontinent cycle’ is

estimated to take about 220
my
Plate Boundaries: Passive Margins

By Joshua Doubek - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27797743
Convergent Plate Boundaries

• Density contrasts generally

result in oceanic crust going
under continental crust (the
process of subduction)
• Angle and rate of subduction
controls amount and
distribution of earthquakes
and thrusting
• Catastrophic volcanism
Convergent Boundary: Oceanic-Continental
Continent-Continent
Transform Plate Boundaries: crust is not created or destroyed
Hotspots
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhSaE0omw9o (2m12s)
• A hot spot is the location where a
stationary mantle plume has risen to the
surface and formed a volcano.
• The Emperor Seamount–Hawaiian
Island chain formed as a result of the
Pacific plate moving over a mantle
plume
• the line of volcanic islands in this chain
traces the direction of plate movement.
• The island of Hawaii and the Loihi
Seamount are the only current hot spots
of this island chain.
• The numbers indicate the age of the
islands in millions of years.
Activity: Plate Tectonics and the Distribution of Resources
 Where are sedimentary rocks forming today?

• The largest sedimentary

accumulations on earth
occur at passive margins or
on ‘continental shelves’

Brune, Sascha. (2017). Rifts and Rifted Margins: A Review of Geodynamic Processes and Natural Hazards.
10.31223/osf.io/qc85u.
Retrieved from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326119500_Rifts_and_Rifted_Margins_A_Review_of_Geodynamic_Processes_and
_Natural_Hazards
Distribution and Types of Volcanoes

Retrieved from: internet geography, what is the distribution of earthquakes and volcanoes?
https://www.internetgeography.net/cambridge-igcse-geography/cambridge-igcse-the-natural-environment/
what-is-the-distribution-of-earthquakes-and-volcanoes/
Plate Tectonics and the Distribution of Natural Resources

• Petroleum
• Middle East
• Broad marine shelf
• Subduction buried organic-rich
sediments which produced petroleum
• Plate collision between Asian and
Arabian Plate created folds (traps)

• Minerals
• Metallic mineral deposits associated with
hydrothermal activity at plate boundaries
• Copper, Iron, Lead, Zinc, Gold, Silver

• What about fishing? Where do you think the

richest fisheries might be? Why?
Plate Tectonics and the Distribution of Life

• Distribution of plant and animal life is

controlled by:
• Climate
• Geographic barriers
• E.g. Isthmus of Panama

• Isolation can lead to biotic provinces – a

region characterized by distinctive
assemblages of plants and animals
• E.g. marsupials in Madagascar and
Australia are isolated
You may want to check out
• Historical Perspective http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dynamic/historical.html
The United States Geological Survey provides an historical explanation of the development of plate tectonics theory.

• The PLATES Project http://www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/plates/index.htm

The Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas the PLATES project provides a resource for plate tectonics media,
publications and teaching resources.

• This Dynamic Earth http://www.mnh.si.edu/earth/

Four topics are covered in this website by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History including Plate Tectonics and
Volcanoes.

• Mantle plumes.org http://www.mantleplumes.org/

This blog discusses the origin of “hotspot” volcanism and is frequented by some of the top names in the field.

• GPS Time Series https://sideshow.jpl.nasa.gov/post/series.html

Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers are used to determine precise geodetic position measurements each day to chronicle
plate movements.
Review

• In your own words, define or describe continental drift. It proposed the idea of
how the continents were joined together and they have been reconfiguring.
• The unified theory of plate tectonics combines what three earlier concepts?
Uniformitarianism, geological time, continental drift.
• What is meant by the term sea-floor spreading? When new ocean crust is formed
• What is meant by the term subduction? When something is pushed beneath
other thing.
• List the three principle types of boundaries between tectonic plates. Divergent,
convergent and transform
• Subduction zones occur along __convergent.____ tectonic plate boundaries.
• Divergent boundaries are characterized by ____ocean ridges_____ under the
oceans and –Rift valleys----where they occur on continents.