Fracture zones are common features in the geology of oceanic basins. Globally most fault zones are located on divergent plate boundary, divergent plate boundaries on oceanic crust. This means that they are located around mid-ocean ridges and trend perpendicular to them. The term fracture zone is used almost exclusively for features on oceanic crust; similar structures on continental crust are instead termed transform fault, transform or strike slip faults, a denomination active fracture zones also can have. Some fracture zones have been created by mid-ocean ridge segments that have been subduction, subducted and may not longer exist.

Pacific Ocean

Most fracture zones in the Pacific Ocean originate from large mid-ocean ridges (also called "rises") such as the East Pacific Rise, Chile Rise and Juan de Fuca Ridge. The plates that host the fractures are Nazca Plate, Nazca, Pacific Plate, Pacific, antarctic Plate, Antarctic, Juan de Fuca Plate, Juan de Fuca and Cocos Plate, Cocos among others. Fracture zones being subduction, subducted under Southern and Central America are generally southwest-northeast oriented reflecting the relative motion of Cocos, Nazca and the Antarctic Plates.

Chile Rise

The fracture zones of the Chile Rise trend in a west to east fashion with the most southern ones taking a slightly more southwest to northeast orientation. This non-perpendicular relation to Chile's coast reflects the oblique subduction of Nazca Plate under southern Chile. West of Chile rise the fracture zones are hosted in the Antarctic Plate. Some fracture zones such as Chile Fracture Zone, Chile and Valdivia Fracture Zone, Valdivia make up large sections of the Nazca-Antarctic Plate boundary.

East Pacific Rise

Galapagos Rise

* Panama Fracture Zone, Panama

Juan de Fuca and Gorda Ridges

Molokai and Murray fracture zones shown in the list were created by ridge segments that no longer exist. * Blanco Fracture Zone, Blanco * Mendocino Fracture Zone, Mendocino * Molokai Fracture Zone, Molokai * Murray Fracture Zone, Murray * Sovanco Fracture Zone, Sovanco

Atlantic Ocean

In the Atlantic Ocean most fracture zones originate from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which runs from north to south, and are therefore west to east oriented in general. There are about 300 fracture zones, with an average north-south separation of : two for each degree of latitude. Physically it makes sense to group Atlantic fracture zones into three categories: # Small offset: length of transform fault less than # Medium offset: offset over 30 kilometers # Large offset: offset several hundreds of kilometers

Mid-Atlantic Ridge (Northern Hemisphere)

Fracture zones involved in the early opening of the North Atlantic

Mid-Atlantic Ridge (Southern Hemisphere)

Indian Ocean

* Diamantina Fracture Zone, Diamantina

Southwest Indian Ridge

* Bouvet Triple Junction, Bouvet Fracture Zone * Moshesh Fracture Zone * Islas Orcadas Fracture Zone * Shaka Fracture Zone * Dutoit Fracture Zone * Prince Edward Fracture Zone * Discovery II Fracture Zone * Indomed Fracture Zone * Gallieni Fracture Zone * Atlantis II Fracture ZonePatriat, P., Sauter, D., Munschy, M., & Parson, L. (1997). A survey of the Southwest Indian Ridge axis between Atlantis II Fracture Zone and the Indian Ocean Triple Junction: Regional setting and large scale segmentation. Marine Geophysical Researches, 19(6), 457–80. * Novara Fracture Zone * Melville Fracture Zone

Carlsberg Ridge

* Owen Fracture Zone, Owen

Central Indian Ridge

* Mauritius Fault Zone, Mauritius

Lakshadweep-Chagos Ridge

* Vishnu Fault Zone, Vishnu

Southern Ocean

* Endurance Fault Zone * Eltanin Fault System * Hjort Fracture Zone * Hero Fault Zone * Kosminskaya Fracture Zone * Quest Fault Zone * Pitman Fracture Zone * Shackleton Fracture Zone * Vinogradov Fracture Zone

References

; Sources
The Global Seafloor Fabric and Magnetic Lineation Data Base Project
{{portalbar, Geology, Oceans Geology-related lists, Fracture zones Fracture zones, *