Alpide belt

Also known as Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt

seismic and orogenic belt that includes an array of mountain ranges extending for more than 15'000 km along the southern margin of Eurasia

Key facts

Peak: Mount Everest
Elevation: 8,848.86 m (29,031.7 ft)
Length: 15,000 km (9,300 mi) E–W in the west, N–S in the east
Etymology: Derived from Alps
Mesozoic oceanic platform: Southern Eurasia, northern Africa, central Asian subcontinent, southeast Asia
Formed by: compressive forces at aligned convergent plate boundaries
Orogenies: Alpine (in west), Himalayan (in east)
Mountain type: Folded mountain ranges

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Wikidata facts

Instance of: orogenic belt
Has part: Rif
Named after: Himalayas
Country: Bulgaria
Continent: Africa
Elevation: 8848
Material used: metamorphic rock
Image: Alpiner Gebirgsgürtel.png

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on focus list of Wikimedia project: WikiProject Ukraine
Commons category: Alpide belt
different from: Alps
temporal range start: Eocene
temporal range end: Meghalayan

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Encyclopedic overview

The Alpide belt or Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt or Alpine-Persia–Tibet–Burma orogeny, or more recently and rarely the Tethyan orogenic belt, is a seismic and orogenic belt that includes an array of mountain ranges extending for more than 15,000 kilometres (9,300 mi) along the southern margin of Eurasia, stretching from Java and Sumatra, through the Indochinese Peninsula, the Himalayas and Transhimalayas, the mountains of Iran, Caucasus, Anatolia, the Mediterranean, and out into the Atlantic.

It includes, from west to east, the major ranges of the Atlas Mountains, the Alps, the Caucasus Mountains, Alborz, Hindu Kush, Karakoram, and the Himalayas. It is the second most seismically active region in the world, after the circum-Pacific belt (the Ring of Fire), with 17% of the world's largest earthquakes.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Alpide belt” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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