The Earth

• Insides
• Plate Tectonics
• How the Philippines
Came to Be
Parts
The Earth’s Surface

• Has the Earth’s surface always been this way?

• Is it just a coincidence that Africa and the
Americas seem to have split from each other?
Continental Drift Theory
• First developed by Alfred Wegener (1912)
• Shapes of continents suggest they were once
joined
• Rocks and fossils on continents on opposite sides
of oceans are identical and of same age
• Parts of Africa and India were once buried in ice
sheets; North America and Northern Europe hold
fossils of tropical organisms
• More evidence in 1960’s:
– Polar wandering, reversal of magnetic poles
– Sea floor spreading
Evidence for Continental Drift
Similar fossils occur in
separate continents

Geologic histories of
regions in separate
continents best explained
by their being once
adjacent to each other
Continental
Drift
• Theory was initially
dismissed due to the
lack of a mechanism
to cause massive
continents to move
 Plate Tectonics: Main premises
• Earth’s crust made up of plates (~20)
– Two kinds: oceanic plates (denser and thinner),
continental plates
• Plates move as if on a conveyor belt (the mantle),
– Speed: 10 cm/yr (10,000 kms in 100 million years)
• Mantle flows like a viscous liquid
– Energy comes from radioactive decay
– Unequal heating leads to convection currents
– Plates float on and move with flowing mantle
• Many geologic processes take place near plate
edges
– Volcanoes, sea-floor spreading, earthquakes, mountain
ranges
Mechanism for Continental Drift:
Convection Currents in the Mantle
• Parts of the Mantle
are hotter than
others
• Hot spots expand
 decrease density
 become buoyant
 rise like a
O T
H balloon
• Adjacent areas
move in to fill
COOL

spaces left behind

by rising fluid
• Cool spots sink,
creating a loop
The Plates

Geologically active areas are at plate boundaries

 Convergent: Subduction
zones; destroys crustal
material

Types of Plate
Boundaries
Divergent: Ocean
ridges; creates
new crustal Conservative: Near faults;
material translational, no loss nor
creation of crustal material
 Volcanoes
• Form along a line (arc) near
subduction zones
• Water in subducted oceanic
plate helps form magma
• Associated with trenches,
deepest parts of the ocean
• May also form over hot spots in the mantle, or where two
oceanic plates converge
Sea Floor Spreading

• Occur at mid-oceanic ridges where mantle is moving apart, creating

openings for magma to be released and form new crust
• Rocks are older the farther away from ridge
 Earthquakes

• Form near plate edges, or where plates are weakest

(faults) or subject to stresses
• Occur when rocks suddenly give way to pressure
Mountain Ranges
• Form where two continental plates
push against each other
 The Philippines

• Country lies on a narrow oceanic

microplate between Eurasian Plate
and Philippine Plate • Part of Pacific Rim of Fire
• Philippine Plate is oceanic, moving • Near subduction zones, trenches
northward into Eurasian plate and faults; highly active
The Philippines
• Plate tectonics explain many
of its features
• Rich in limestone due to oceanic
origin
• Highly volcanic; most of its
mountains and lakes are extinct
volcanoes
• Rich in mineral resources
• Earthquake-prone
• Too young to contain dinosaur
fossils
• Rich in diversity – biological and
linguistic
• In a few tens of millions of
years, islands will disappear