When researchers commenced to explore the bathymetry of midocean ridges in detail, they observed that mid-ocean ridges aren't lengthy, uninterrupted traces, but rather consist of brief segments that appear to be offset laterally from each different (parent above a) by means of narrow belts of broken and abnormal sea ?Oor. These belts, or fracture zones, lie kind of at proper angles to the ridge segments, intersect the ends of the segments, and increase past the ends of the segments. Originally, researchers incorrectly assumed that the complete period of every fracture quarter changed into a fault, and that slip on a fracture region had displaced segments of the mid-ocean ridge sideways, relative to every different. In different phrases, they imagined that a mid-ocean ridge initiated as a continuous, fence-like line that most effective later become damaged up via faulting. But while information approximately the distribution of earthquakes alongside mid-ocean ridges became available, it became clean that this model couldn't be correct. Earthquakes, and consequently lively fault slip, arise best at the section of a fracture region that lies between two ridge segments. The quantities of fracture zones that expand beyond the edges of ridge segments, out into the abyssal simple, aren't seismically active.
The distribution of movement along fracture zones remained a mystery until a Canadian researcher, J. Tuzo Wilson, began to think about fracture zones in the context of the sea-floor-spreading concept. Wilson proposed that fracture zones formed at the same time as the ridge axis itself, and thus the ridge consisted of separate segments to start with. These segments were linked (not offset) by fracture zones. With this idea in mind, he drew a sketch map showing two ridge-axis segments linked by a fracture zone, and he drew arrows to indicate the direction that ocean floor was moving, relative to the ridge axis, as a result of sea-floor-spreading (figure above b). Look at the arrows in figure above b. Clearly, the movement direction on the active portion of the fracture zone must be opposite to the movement direction that researchers originally thought occurred on the structure. Further, in Wilson’s model, slip occurs only along the segment of the fracture zone between the two ridge segments (figure above c). Plates on opposite sides of the inactive part of a fracture zone move together, as one plate.
Wilson delivered the time period rework boundary, or transform fault, for the actively slipping segment of a fracture area between two ridge segments, and he pointed out that these are a third form of plate boundary. At a remodel boundary, one plate slides sideways past another, but no new plate forms and no vintage plate is fed on. Transform obstacles are, therefore, de?Ned by means of a vertical fault on which the slip route parallels the Earth?S surface. The slip breaks up the crust and bureaucracy a set of steep fractures.
So far we've discussed only transforms along mid-ocean ridges. Not all transforms link ridge segments. Some, such as the Alpine Fault of New Zealand, link trenches, while others link a trench to a ridge segment. Further, not all transform faults occur in oceanic lithosphere; a few cut across continental lithosphere. The San Andreas Fault, for example, which cuts across California, defines part of the plate boundary between the North American Plate and the Pacific Plate the portion of California that lies to the west of the fault (including Los Angeles) is part of the Pacific Plate, while the portion that lies to the east of the fault is part of the North American Plate (figure above d, e).
Credits: Stephen Marshak (Essentials of Geology)
