Ephemeral plate tectonics at the Queen Charlotte triple junction

Three plate boundaries, the Queen Charlotte transform, the Cascadia subduction zone, and the Juan de Fuca Ridge, meet in a complex triple junction offshore Vancouver Island. New SeaBeam bathymetry interpreted with existing regional data sets indicate that the Dellwood Knolls and Tuzo Wilson volcanic field are not independent plate boundaries, but the result of leaky transform tectonics between two overlapping transform faults. The system is evolving to a single triple junction at the northern terminus of the Juan de Fuca ridge where it meets the Nootka deformation zone. Thus the Explorer microplate, which was spawned ~5 Ma, is an ephemeral adjustment to mechanical difficulties at the triple junction. -from Authors