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A Snippet o’ Subduction Zone Goodness for Ye

If I ever become ridiculously rich, I’m going to open up a geological theme park. Can you imagine the rides? Earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, and more – all very exciting.

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


If I ever become ridiculously rich, I'm going to open up a geological theme park. Can you imagine the rides? Earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, and more - all very exciting. And educational. I think we could make it work, don't you? Imagine the field trips!

Of course, we'd have to have a roller coaster based on subduction zones. It would be pretty intense. There'd be lots of ups and downs.

We'd start at the mid-ocean ridge, which in this case isn't all that far offshore. The Juan de Fuca plate is just a fragment of a larger plate. Eventually, it'll subduct under the North American plate, some amazing geology will happen, and then it'll only be the Pacific plate in play. We'll have to get deeper in to that someday. But for now: imagine our rollercoaster bumping daintily over the spreading center. Maybe, if we've got enough money to invest, we'll even start underwater, just as we should. How awesome would that be?


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So we slip down the side of the ridge, will all the black smokers and other excitement, and then there's a short, smooth ride over the ocean floor between there and the subduction zone. Once we reach there, the coaster goes bumpity-bump over sediments stuffing the trench, and then begins the long climb over the mightily impressive accretionary prism we've got going on.

I mean, check it out.

A view of the Olympic Mountains from Richmond Beach.

Then once our roller coaster is perched at the tip-top of those glacier-carved peaks of oceanic basalt and sedimentary goodness, it'll zip down the other side and swoop into the forearc basin. It'll have a little bump over the Kitsap Peninsula, and then splash into the Sound. Cuz we're totally gonna have water, right?

Look at that lovely peninsula and all that gorgeous water.

We'll have a kinda washer-board effect as the coaster rolls over the topography carved and deposited by the Cordilleran Ice Sheet. Then there'll be a higher climb over the magmatic arc, the Cascades. Yeah, the northern Cascades have a lot of sedimentary and metamorphic rock, but they've also got volcanoes. Maybe we'll have Glacier Peak erupting as the coaster goes by. We can use synthetic snow dyed gray for the ash clouds.

Foothills and Cascades

(That's not the view from Richmond Beach, of course.)

So once we're perched at the tippy-top of the Cascades, we're staring into the back-arc region. That's all dry and in the rainshadow, and it's really magnificent, but of course you can't see it because we've just had an eruption and the wind's blowing east. (Okay, actually, it's because I don't have a lot of my photos on this tiny machine, and it took me all night to hand-draw my diagram, since this machine won't play with my tablet. I had a lot of fun, though.)

Let's take the coaster back to Richmond Beach so we can admire our forearc basin and accretionary prism some more, shall we?

Gazing into the mists of the Sound.

Hang out in the basin a while. Make friends with the driftwood. Enjoy the magnificent scenery that results when a bit of oceanic crust slides beneath continental, and glaciers put some finishing touches on an already fantastic landscape.

(A version of this post originally appeared at En Tequila Es Verdad)