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 r ...

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 ...

hemispheres stretching from the northern end of Taiwan to the southern tip of the island of Kyūshū. The Okinawa Plate hosts typical earthquakes, like the

1911 Kikai Island earthquake The occurred on June 15 at 23:26 local time (14:26 UTC). The epicenter of the earthquake was located near Kikai Island, Japan. It had a magnitude of 8.1. Overview The earthquake occurred near the northern end of the deepest region in Ryukyu T ...

, 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 lithospheric plates collide. One plate eventually slides beneath the other, a process known as subduction. The subduction zone can be defined by a ...

with the Philippine Sea Plate, 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 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 Yonagun ...

. The Okinawa Plate is bounded on the western side by the Okinawa Trough, 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 with the Yangtze Plate. A section of the southern boundary between the Okinawa Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate is a former subduction zone that now accommodates oblique slip and was the location of the

1771 Great Yaeyama Tsunami The 1771 Great Yaeyama Tsunami (also called 明和の大津波, the Great Tsunami of Meiwa) was caused by the Yaeyama Great Earthquake at about 8 A.M. on April 24, 1771, south-southeast of Ishigaki Island, part of the former Ryūkyū Kingdom and ...

. The northern side of the Okinawa plate is bordered by the Amur Plate.

References

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