Subduction is the sinking of a plate of oceanic lithosphere beneath another plate, back into the mantle. A subduction zone is a convergent plate boundary where subduction takes place; it is marked at the surface by a trench.
示例
Example 15.10 (The Tōhoku earthquake, 2011)
On 11 March 2011 an earthquake of magnitude 9.1 struck off the north-east coast of Honshu, Japan. It happened about down, on the plate boundary itself, where the Pacific plate, moving west at about a year relative to the plate that carries northern Japan, sinks beneath it at the Japan Trench. The two sides of the fault slipped past each other by as much as 50 to , over an area about long and wide. The sea floor above moved with it, and raised a tsunami that ran up to high on the coast; at least people were killed and were missing. The same coast had been struck by tsunamis from this subduction zone in 1611, 1896 and 1933, and perhaps by one as large as that of 2011 in the year 869.