The Easter Fracture Zone is an oceanic

fracture zone A fracture zone is a linear feature on the ocean floor—often hundreds, even thousands of kilometers long—resulting from the action of offset mid-ocean ridge axis segments. They are a consequence of plate tectonics. Lithospheric plates on eit ...

associated with the

transform fault A transform fault or transform boundary, is a fault along a plate boundary where the motion is predominantly horizontal. It ends abruptly where it connects to another plate boundary, either another transform, a spreading ridge, or a subduct ...

extending from the

Tuamotu archipelago The Tuamotu Archipelago or the Tuamotu Islands (french: Îles Tuamotu, officially ) are a French Polynesian chain of just under 80 islands and atolls in the southern Pacific Ocean. They constitute the largest chain of atolls in the world, extendin ...

in the west to the

Peru–Chile Trench The Peru–Chile Trench, also known as the Atacama Trench, is an oceanic trench in the eastern Pacific Ocean, about off the coast of Peru and Chile. It reaches a maximum depth of below sea level in Richards Deep () and is approximately long; ...

to the east. The Easter Fracture Zone extends roughly 5900 kilometers from 20°S,131°W to 26°S,78°W. The landscape consists of several ridges and isolated

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the Crust (geology), crust of a Planet#Planetary-mass objects, planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and volcanic gas, gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Ear ...

s with maximal peak elevation above the seafloor of 3000m. Because the local seafloor has depths around 4000m to the north of the fracture zone and 3400m to the south of the fracture zone, most of its volcanic peaks form seamounts. They do rise above sea level at the Pitcairn Islands and

Easter Island Easter Island ( rap, Rapa Nui; es, Isla de Pascua) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is most famous for its ne ...

References

Easter Fracture Zone
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Encyclopædia Britannica Online An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into article ...

Map pointer to Easter fracture zone. Zoom out to see full extent
Fracture zones Seismic faults of Chile {{tectonics-stub

See also

References