Accretion is a process by which material is added to a tectonic plate or a landmass

Landmass

A landmass is a contiguous area of land surrounded by ocean. Although it may be most often written as one word to distinguish it from the usage "land mass"—the measure of land area—it is also used as two words.Landmasses include:*supercontinents...

. This material may be sediment, volcanic arc

Volcanic arc

A volcanic arc is a chain of volcanoes positioned in an arc shape as seen from above. Offshore volcanoes form islands, resulting in a volcanic island arc. Generally they result from the subduction of an oceanic tectonic plate under another tectonic plate, and often parallel an oceanic trench...

s, seamount

Seamount

A seamount is a mountain rising from the ocean seafloor that does not reach to the water's surface , and thus is not an island. These are typically formed from extinct volcanoes, that rise abruptly and are usually found rising from a seafloor of depth. They are defined by oceanographers as...

s or other igneous features.

Description

There are two types of geologic accretion. The first kind of accretion, plate accretion, involves the addition of material to a tectonic plate. When two tectonic plates collide, one of the plates may slide under the other, a process known as subduction

Subduction

In geology, subduction is the process that takes place at convergent boundaries by which one tectonic plate moves under another tectonic plate, sinking into the Earth's mantle, as the plates converge. These 3D regions of mantle downwellings are known as "Subduction Zones"...

. The plate which is being subducted (the plate going under), is floating on the asthenosphere

Asthenosphere

The asthenosphere is the highly viscous, mechanically weak and ductilely-deforming region of the upper mantle of the Earth...

 and is pushed up and against the other plate. Sediment on the ocean floor will often be scraped by the subducting plate. This scraping causes the sediment to come off the subducted plate and form a mass of material called the accretionary wedge

Accretionary wedge

An accretionary wedge or accretionary prism is formed from sediments that are accreted onto the non-subducting tectonic plate at a convergent plate boundary...

, which attaches itself to the subducting plate (the top plate). Volcanic island arcs or seamounts may collide with the continent, and as they are of relatively light material (i.e. low density) they will often not be subducted, but are thrust into the side of the continent, thereby adding to it.

The second form of accretion is landmass accretion. This involves the addition of sediment to a coastline or riverbank, increasing land area. The most noteworthy landmass accretion is the deposition of alluvium

Alluvium

Alluvium is loose, unconsolidated soil or sediments, eroded, deposited, and reshaped by water in some form in a non-marine setting. Alluvium is typically made up of a variety of materials, including fine particles of silt and clay and larger particles of sand and gravel...

, often containing precious metals, on riverbanks and in river deltas.

Evidence

Continental plates are formed of rocks that are very noticeably different from the rocks that form the ocean floor. The ocean floor, is usually composed of basaltic rocks that make the ocean floor denser than continental plates. In places where plate accretion has occurred, land masses may contain the dense, basaltic rocks that are usually indicative of oceanic lithosphere

Lithosphere

The lithosphere is the rigid outermost shell of a rocky planet. On Earth, it comprises the crust and the portion of the upper mantle that behaves elastically on time scales of thousands of years or greater.- Earth's lithosphere :...

. In addition, a mountain range that is distant from a plate boundary suggests that the rock between the mountain range and the plate boundary is part of an accretionary wedge.

Examples

This process occurs in many places, but especially around the Pacific Rim, including the western coast of North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

, the eastern coast of Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

, and New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

. New Zealand consists of areas of accreted rocks which were added on to the Gondwana continental margin

Continental margin

The continental margin is the zone of the ocean floor that separates the thin oceanic crust from thick continental crust. Continental margins constitute about 28% of the oceanic area....

 over a period of many millions of years. The western coast of North America is made of accreted island arcs. The accreted area stretches from the Rocky Mountains

Rocky Mountains

The Rocky Mountains are a major mountain range in western North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch more than from the northernmost part of British Columbia, in western Canada, to New Mexico, in the southwestern United States...

 to the Pacific coast. The island of Barbados

Barbados

Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is in length and as much as in width, amounting to . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about east of the islands of Saint...

 is a similar process being actively formed in the Atlantic Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

.

Resources

• Robert, Ballard D. Exploring Our Living Planet. Washington D.C.: The National Geographic Society, 1983.
• Sattler, Helen Roney. Our Patchwork Planet. New York: Lee & Shepard, 1995.
• Watson, John. "This Dynamic Planet." US Geological Survey. 6 December. 2004 http://pubs.usgs.gov/pdf/planet.html