Elias is driving through the southwest part of the US on a road trip, and gets out of the car to go hiking. While hiking, he not
es a very long channel running for miles in one direction. There are no distinct mountains nearby, and he is very far from the ocean. At lunch, the locals tell him there are lots of earthquakes in the area. He also thinks he sees an old road that used to cross the channel, but looks like it has been shifted apart somehow. He recalls what he learned about plate tectonics in class. Given these clues, what type of plate boundary could Elias possibly be standing on or near? transform divergent convergent oceanic-oceanic
The southwestern part of the United States is under the influence of a transform plate boundary. The small plate on which this part of the country lies is moving parallel to the much bigger North American continental plate.
With this movement, the plates move parallel to one another, creating a horizontal movement because of the horizontal pressure. Because of the movement, there's lot of adjustments happening deep into the crust, thus creating lot of earthquakes, as well as faults. Both the earthquakes and the faults are contributing to the damage on the infrastructure, most noticeably on the roads.
