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subduction zone
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Cross-sectional diagram illustrating plate tectonics, showing oceanic and continental crust moving over the asthenosphere. It highlights divergent boundaries at oceanic ridges where crust forms, convergent boundaries at trenches with subduction zones where crust is destroyed, and a transform boundary with a fault. Features such as island arcs, rising magma, and hotspots are labeled. The Earth's crust is a jigsaw puzzle of huge rigid plates in constant relative motion. The plates are bounded by three types of features: ridge axes, where new seafloor is created in mid-ocean; transform faults, where plates slide past one another; and subduction zones, where plates overlap, with one plate sliding under the other. Diagram showing the process of slab pull in plate tectonics, with an oceanic plate subducting beneath a continental plate. Arrows illustrate mantle convection, gravity pulling the slab downward, and viscous resistance in the mantle layers, while labels identify the lithosphere, upper and lower mantle, and the forces acting on the plates. cross section of a tectonic plate Cross-sectional diagram of a subduction zone showing oceanic crust moving beneath continental crust, with features labeled including transform fault, oceanic ridge, trench, accretionary wedge, rising magma, and the Benioff-Wadati zone.
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crustal generation and destruction
crustal generation and destruction Three-dimensional diagram showing crustal generation and destruction according to the theory of plate tectonics; included are the three kinds of plate boundaries—divergent, convergent (or collision), and strike-slip (or transform).

subduction zone

geology
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The Earth's crust is a jigsaw puzzle of huge rigid plates in constant relative motion. The plates are bounded by three types of features: ridge axes, where new seafloor is created in mid-ocean; transform faults, where plates slide past one another; and subduction zones, where plates overlap, with one plate sliding under the other.
The Earth's crust is a jigsaw puzzle of huge rigid plates in constant relative motion. The plates are bounded by three types of features: ridge axes, where new seafloor is created in mid-ocean; transform faults, where plates slide past one another; and subduction zones, where plates overlap, with one plate sliding under the other.

subduction zone, oceanic trench area marginal to a continent in which, according to the theory of plate tectonics, older and denser seafloor underthrusts the continental mass, dragging downward into the Earth’s upper mantle the accumulated trench sediments. The subduction zone, accordingly, is the antithesis of the mid-oceanic ridge. New seafloor is generated from the upper mantle at the mid-oceanic ridges, spreads laterally outward, and is eventually subducted, or consumed, at the margins of ocean basins. Subduction may also occur between two regions of oceanic crust, with older, denser sections underthrusting younger, less-dense ones.

This article was most recently revised and updated by John P. Rafferty.