SEISMIC BELT

narrow zone on the Earth's surface along which most of the world's seismic activity occurs. If the lithosphere is thought of as made up of several large plates, the edges where these plates move against one another would represent the world's seismic belts. Island arcs, mountain belts, volcanism, deep ocean troughs, and seismic activity are features of seismic belts. The two major seismic belts are the Circum-Pacific Belt, which surrounds the Pacific Ocean, and the Alpide Belt, which stretches from the Azores through the Mediterranean and Middle East to northern India, Sumatra, and Indonesia, where it joins the Circum-Pacific Belt.