The Pacific Northwest is known for many things—its beer, ... The Juan de Fuca, a small oceanic plate, is being driven under the North American plate, atop which the continental U.S. sits.

A peek into the curious geology of the Pacific Northwest helps tease apart what may happen when the last bits of an oceanic plate get swallowed up. Scientists on board the R/V Thomas G. Thompson ...

The new calculations showed the Pacific plate is pulling away from the North American plate a little more -- approximately 2 millimeters a year -- than the rigid-plate theory would account for, he ...

Subduction of the Pacific Plate beneath the North American Plate creating the Aleutian trench and volcanic island arc (Credit: Alaska Volcano Observatory). Click image for a larger view.

For about the last 30 million years, a small tectonic plate named Juan de Fuca has been sliding under the far vaster North American plate into the Earth’s mantle.

To the east is the North American Plate, which is moving southeast. Los Angeles, located on the Pacific plate, is now 340 miles south of San Francisco, located on the North American plate.

Just south of Alaska, the Pacific plate is sliding underneath the North American plate, an area called the subduction zone. That’s why the state is highly seismic, Blakeman tells The Verge .

Since January of 1700, pressure has been building beneath the waters of the Pacific. Off the coast of Oregon and Washington, several tectonic plates have been sliding under the plate beneath the ...

Greenland is present on the North American tectonic plate, as per experts. For tens of millions of years, this plate has undergone constant movements, stated NASA.These movements caused Greenland ...

Nearly 700 miles long, the subduction zone is located at the intersection between the Juan de Fuca Plate and the North American Plate off the coast of Pacific British Columbia, Washington, Oregon ...

For more than 15 years, UB geologist Margarete Jadamec has studied the Alaskan subduction zone, where two huge pieces of the Earth’s rigid outer layer — the North American Plate and the Pacific Plate ...