The movement of tectonic plates will be dealt with in more detail in future articles as you build up the features of your world map. Plates that move towards each other causes mountain ranges to spring up and quite often volcanic activity. These plates will cause a continental rift (as shown on the far right of the diagram above) 3 Moving Towards The movement of two plates running next to each other causes earthquakes 2 Moving Away However I will briefly run over what happens with each movement. These types of movement will become more important to you later on as you move into drawing other parts of your world map. One of the key things to remember about tectonic plates is that they move, but very slowly (up to 3.9 inch per year) and only move in one of the 3 ways as shown by the diagram below:
Because the lava flows and moves under the surface due to different temperatures in the earth core they slowly move these plates which is what is believed to cause continental drift. They are what separate the land from the molten lava below. Tectonic Plates are sections of a planet’s lithosphere (the crust and mantle of a planet) that your world continent will then sit upon.
