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Earth and Space Sciences · Glossary

What is Hotspot track?

Definition 13.8 High School Earth and Space Sciences · Chapter 13 — Plates and Their Motions

A hotspot track is the line of volcanoes, and of the drowned volcanoes called seamounts, that a plate carries away from a hotspot as it moves over it: the active volcano stands over the hotspot, and the volcanoes are older and older with distance from it.

A plate moving at the speed v over a plume fixed in the mantle (not to scale). A volcano of age t, built over the plume, has been carried the distance d = v\,t; the older volcanoes are eroded and sink below the sea.
A plate moving at the speed vv over a plume fixed in the mantle (not to scale). A volcano of age tt, built over the plume, has been carried the distance d=v td = v\,t; the older volcanoes are eroded and sink below the sea.
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