The slow horizontal movements called lithospheric plates skladkoutvoryuyuchymy processes. Although the speed of lithospheric plates and small, only a few centimeters a year, it significantly affects the formation of the relief of the planet. For example, it is due to horizontal movement of lithospheric plates formed the highest mountain systems of land Himalayas, the Andes, Cordillera. For this reason, having the Carpathians and Crimean mountains.
Allocate 7 major plates and several smaller ones. The main are: African, Eurasian, Pacific, North American, South American, Indo-Australian and Nazca. Attributed to small coconut, Caribbean, Filipino and Arabian plates. Some of the plates and can move vertically. These movements are hard to see because they occur over the centuries. They are called slow vertical movements.
In slow vertical movement in the zones of interaction lithospheric plates occur and sudden fluctuations. On the surface they are manifested in the form of earthquakes, which often have considerable destructive power. The location was the mass displacement of rocks, called the center or hypocenter earthquake. As a result, a huge release of energy arising waves called seismic. They extend in different directions from the cell and reach the surface. Place on the surface of the cell called the earthquake epicenter, the farther from it, the strength of earthquake relief. Power of the earthquake is measured in points from 1 (when the tremors could be noticed only by seismic instruments) to 12 (where, in addition to catastrophic destruction, occurring also significant changes in relief).
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