What kind of boundaries are there, where are they located, and most importantly, what kind of boundaries does the North American plate have. These plates steadily slide past each other with each passing year. There are 3 main plate boundaries that we all need to know about. They are convergent, divergent and transforming. They all have different names even though they are all related to borders. This is because they all move the crust in different ways. With a few tenths of a degree or more, the plates are always in motion. Sometimes when these plates collide, things like volcanoes can form. Boundaries can create things like: folded mountain ranges, volcanoes, earthquakes, trenches, mid-ocean ridges, and rift valleys. Convergent boundaries occur when plates collide with each other. Divergent boundaries occur when plates move away from each other. And finally, transformation boundaries occur when plates slide sideways past each other. For some examples: Southern California sits on the boundary between the North American plate and the Pacific plate, thus making it an easy fault zone. That's why Southern California has so many earthquakes. It's because they are on the edge of a transformation. Another example is that a divergent boundary on Iceland between the North American plate and the Eurasian plate is causing Iceland to split along a central ocean.