Editing Subduction (section)

===Orogeny===
{{Main|Orogeny}}
Orogeny is the process of mountain building. Subducting plates can lead to orogeny by bringing oceanic islands, oceanic plateaus, sediments and passive continental margins to convergent margins. The material often does not subduct with the rest of the plate but instead is accreted to (scraped off) the continent, resulting in [[exotic terrane]]s. The collision of this oceanic material causes crustal thickening and mountain-building. The accreted material is often referred to as an [[accretionary wedge]] or prism. These accretionary wedges can be associated with [[ophiolites]] (uplifted ocean crust consisting of sediments, pillow basalts, sheeted dykes, gabbro, and peridotite).<ref>{{cite book|title=Encyclopedia of Environmental Change|editor-first=John A.|editor-last=Matthews|volume=1|location=Los Angeles|publisher=SAGE Reference|year=2014}}</ref>

Subduction may also cause orogeny without bringing in oceanic material that accretes to the overriding continent. When the lower plate subducts at a shallow angle underneath a continent (something called "flat-slab subduction"), the subducting plate may have enough traction on the bottom of the continental plate to cause the upper plate to contract by folding, faulting, crustal thickening, and mountain building. Flat-slab subduction causes mountain building and volcanism moving into the continent, away from the trench, and has been described in western North America (i.e. Laramide orogeny, and currently in Alaska, South America, and East Asia.<ref name="Van der Meer-2017"/>

The processes described above allow subduction to continue while mountain building happens concurrently, which is in contrast to continent-continent collision orogeny, which often leads to the termination of subduction.