Where should my island mountain ranges be, based on my plate tectonics?
I've sketched out an island, and then threw some tectonic plate boundaries on top hoping it would help me plot mountains.
But the more I look at geological diagrams of plate boundaries, and read up on them the more confused I get.
Here's my island:
I put the boundaries there thinking they made sense for the island shape, but I'm not sure anymore.
Where should my island mountain ranges be, based on my plate tectonics?
Or do I need to redraw the plate boundaries?
1 answer
It looks like you will have uplift, frequent earthquakes, and volcanos in the lower part of your island where three plates are jamming together.
In the northern part, the plates are spreading. You'd need volcanic activity to explain mountains there, or even the island existing at all. This would be similar to Iceland, for example.
Note that islands don't require being on plate boundaries. They can exist for various other reasons, like being on a piece of a plate that broke off, what's left of an old mountain range, moving over a hotspot (like the Hawaiian islands), etc.
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