The Azores hotspot is a volcanic hotspot in the Northern Atlantic Ocean. The Azores is relatively young and is associated with a bathymetric swell, a gravity anomaly and ocean island basalt geochemistry. The Azores hotspot lies just east of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge
Geological area
The Azores domain comprises the Azores Plateau and the Azores archipelago (formed of 9 islands extending a distance of 480 km which have been volcanically active for around 7 Myr). The archipelago lies on the lateral branch of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge near the junction of three major tectonic plates; the North American Plate, the Eurasian Plate and the African Plate. This unique location causes the area to have ridge-hotspot interaction with a variation of volcanic processes.
The Azores Plateau
The Azores archipelago rises from Azores Plateau, which is an area of thickened oceanic crust thought to have formed over the last 20 Mya. Negative velocity S-wave anomalies have been mapped beneath the Azores in the upper 250–300 km. This has been suggested to be a signature of a plume that created...
Ben Brockert
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