The Okinawa Plate, or Okinawa Platelet, is a minor continental

tectonic plate Plate tectonics (from the la, label=Late Latin, tectonicus, from the grc, τεκτονικός, lit=pertaining to building) is the generally accepted scientific theory that considers the Earth's lithosphere to comprise a number of large te ...

in the

northern Northern may refer to the following: Geography * North, a point in direction * Northern Europe, the northern part or region of Europe * Northern Highland, a region of Wisconsin, United States * Northern Province, Sri Lanka * Northern Range, a ra ...

and

eastern Eastern may refer to: Transportation *China Eastern Airlines, a current Chinese airline based in Shanghai *Eastern Air, former name of Zambia Skyways *Eastern Air Lines, a defunct American airline that operated from 1926 to 1991 *Eastern Air Li ...

hemispheres stretching from the northern end of

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

to the southern tip of the island of

Kyūshū is the third-largest island of Japan's five main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands ( i.e. excluding Okinawa). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regional name referred to Kyushu and its surround ...

. The Okinawa Plate hosts typical earthquakes, like the 1911 Kikai Island earthquake, and various types of slow earthquakes, including low frequency earthquakes, very low frequency earthquakes, tremor, and slow slip events.

Boundaries

The eastern side of the Okinawa Plate forms a

convergent boundary A convergent boundary (also known as a destructive boundary) is an area on Earth where two or more Plate tectonics, lithospheric plates collide. One plate eventually slides beneath the other, a process known as subduction. The subduction zone can ...

with the

Philippine Sea Plate The Philippine Sea Plate or the Philippine Plate is a tectonic plate comprising oceanic lithosphere that lies beneath the Philippine Sea, to the east of the Philippines. Most segments of the Philippines, including northern Luzon, are part of ...

, forming the

Ryukyu Trench The , also called Nansei-Shotō Trench, is a 1398 km (868 mi) long oceanic trench located along the southeastern edge of Japan's Ryukyu Islands in the Philippine Sea in the Pacific Ocean, between northeastern Taiwan and southern Japan. ...

and the

island arc Island arcs are long chains of active volcanoes with intense seismic activity found along convergent tectonic plate boundaries. Most island arcs originate on oceanic crust and have resulted from the descent of the lithosphere into the mantle alon ...

that forms the

Ryukyu Islands The , also known as the or the , are a chain of Japanese islands that stretch southwest from Kyushu to Taiwan: the Ōsumi, Tokara, Amami, Okinawa, and Sakishima Islands (further divided into the Miyako and Yaeyama Islands), with Yonaguni ...

. The Okinawa Plate is bounded on the western side by the

Okinawa Trough The (also called , literally China-Ryukyu Border Trough ) is a seabed feature of the East China Sea. It is an active, initial back-arc rifting basin which has formed behind the Ryukyu arc-trench system in the West Pacific. It developed where th ...

, a

back arc basin A back-arc basin is a type of geologic basin, found at some convergent plate boundaries. Presently all back-arc basins are submarine features associated with island arcs and subduction zones, with many found in the western Pacific Ocean. Most of ...

and

divergent boundary In plate tectonics, a divergent boundary or divergent plate boundary (also known as a constructive boundary or an extensional boundary) is a linear feature that exists between two tectonic plates that are moving away from each other. Divergent b ...

with the

Yangtze Plate The Yangtze Plate, also called the South China Block or the South China Subplate, comprises the bulk of southern China. It is separated on the east from the Okinawa Plate by a rift that forms the Okinawa Trough which is a back-arc basin, on the so ...

. A section of the southern boundary between the Okinawa Plate and the

is a former

subduction zone Subduction is a geological process in which the oceanic lithosphere is recycled into the Earth's mantle at convergent boundaries. Where the oceanic lithosphere of a tectonic plate converges with the less dense lithosphere of a second plate, the ...

that now accommodates oblique slip and was the location of the 1771 Great Yaeyama Tsunami. The northern side of the Okinawa plate is bordered by the

Amur Plate The Amurian Plate (or Amur Plate; also occasionally referred to as the China Plate, not to be confused with the South China Subplate) is a minor tectonic plate in the northern and eastern hemispheres. It covers Manchuria, the Korean Peninsula ...

References

Tectonic plates Geology of the Pacific Ocean {{tectonics-stub