Indonesia Plate Tectonics Geology

Indonesia Plate Tectonics Geology

Introduction

Indonesia is a state comprising of a marvelous structure. It has the world's five chief islands and about 33 small island groups. Out of the total of 13,667 islands, people occupy about 6000 islands enjoying a life in their own way. The two continents of Asia and Australia are bridged by the archipelago that locates on a crossroad between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Indonesia has a small piece of land. Most of its area is covered with water. The water coverage is about 7.9 million sq. km. out of the total area of 9.8 million sq. km.

Discussion

Internal Structure of Indonesia

The physiographic structure indicates that the Sumatra, Java, and Kalimantan are the three islands that are committed to the Asian Continent's Sunda Shelf. This zone has a characteristic that the depth of water depth remains below or up to 200 meters. Irian Jaya and the Aru islands are situated in the east. These landmasses lie on Australian's subcontinent part that is famous with the name of Sahul Shelf. Indonesia has about 60 Tertiary alluvial basins that spread out from Sumatra (west) to Irian Jaya (east). Out of these 60 Basins, the petroleum obtains from the exploration of only 38 basins. The production of Oil and Gas is from 14 basins. The basins that lie on the offshore are up to 73%.

The structure of Indonesia is geologically complex. It lies at the place where an integrative effect of the tectonically active zones prevails. These zones have a characteristic of severe volcanic eruption that results from the process of subduction (Hall, 2004).

Indonesia is divided into two parts, the Eastern Indonesia and the Western Indonesia. The main aspiration for the Western Indonesia is continental crust. Arc and ophiolitic crust cover part of eastern Indonesia along with a number of emerging ocean basins. The reassembly of wreckages rifted from the Gondwana supercontinent comes up in the Eurasian subduction edge and forms up the Indonesian archipelago of Indonesia over the past 300 million years. The plates' interaction at the eastern part of Indonesia is more complex because of the prevalence of mixed Eurasian continental and oceanic crust (Achmad, 1998). The internal structure of Indonesia at present is the consequence of Cenozoic subduction and collision at Eurasian margin.

Theory of plate tectonics and development in Indonesia

The natural earth model forms the basis of the Plate tectonics theory. There are two radical regimes of tectonic history. First is the rifting occurrence and the second are the basin inversion. (Kaufman, Phelps, & Kveton, 1997)

The stiff lithosphere elements comprise of oceanic and continental crust. The upper layers compose of pieces known as plates. The thickness of the plates depends on whether they are at the upper or lower mantle. An observation reveals that the overlying plates moves as a result of any heat transfer system within the asthenosphere. The movement causes the separation of plates at the oceanic edges. The collision at the oceanic trench occurs, ...