Alpide belt

"Alpide" redirects here; not to be confused with "Alpine".

Approximate extent of the Alpide orogenic system

The Alpide belt or Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt is a seismic belt and orogenic belt that includes an array of mountain ranges extending along the southern margin of Eurasia, stretching from Java to Sumatra through the Himalayas, the Mediterranean, and out into the Atlantic. It includes the Alps, the Carpathians, the Pyrenees, the mountains of Anatolia and Iran, the Hindu Kush, and the mountains of Southeast Asia. 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.

The Alpide belt is being created by ongoing plate tectonics such as the Alpine orogeny. The belt is the result of Mesozoic to Cenozoic to recent closure of the Tethys Ocean and process of collision between the northward-moving African, Arabian and Indian plates with the Eurasian plate.

Main ranges

• Cantabrian Mountains (Basque Mountains), Pyrenees, Alps, Sudetes, Carpathians, Balkans, and Crimean Mountains in Europe;
• Atlas Mountains in Northern Africa, Baetic System (Sierra Nevada and Balearic Islands), Apennine Mountains, Dinaric Alps (Hellenides) and Aegean Islands (Crete, Karpathos and Rhodos) in Southern Europe;
• Pontic Mountains, Caucasus Mountains, Armenian Highland, Alborz, Kopet Dag, Hindu Kush, Pamir Mountains, Tian Shan, Kunlun Mountains, Hengduan Mountains, the Indochina (Annamite Range) and Malay Peninsula in Asia;
• Cyprus (Troodos Mountains), Taurus Mountains, Zagros Mountains, Makran Highland, Sulaiman Mountains, Karakoram, Himalayas, Patkai, Chin Hills, Arakan Mountains, Andaman and Nicobar Islands in South Asia.

Indonesia lies between the Pacific Ring of Fire along the northeastern islands adjacent to and including New Guinea and the Alpide belt along the south and west from Sumatra, Java and the Lesser Sunda Islands (Bali, Flores, and Timor). The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake just off the coast of Sumatra was located within the Alpide belt.

References

• Historic Earthquakes & Earthquake Statistics - USGS
• "Ring of Fire", Plate Tectonics, Sea-Floor Spreading, Subduction Zones, "Hot Spots" - USGS