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