The Philippine Sea Plate or the Philippine Plate is a tectonic plate comprising oceanic

lithosphere A lithosphere () is the rigid, outermost rocky shell of a terrestrial planet or natural satellite. On Earth, it is composed of the crust (geology), crust and the portion of the upper mantle (geology), mantle that behaves elastically on time sca ...

that lies beneath the

Philippine Sea The Philippine Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean east of the Philippine archipelago (hence the name), the largest in the world, occupying an estimated surface area of . The Philippine Sea Plate forms the floor of the sea. Its ...

, to the east of the Philippines. Most segments of the Philippines, including northern Luzon, are part of the

Philippine Mobile Belt In the geology of the Philippines, the Philippine Mobile Belt is a complex portion of the tectonic boundary between the Eurasian Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate, comprising most of the country of the Philippines. It includes two subduction z ...

, which is geologically and tectonically separate from the Philippine Sea Plate. The plate is bordered mostly by convergent boundaries:Smoczyk, G.M., Hayes, G.P., Hamburger, M.W., Benz, H.M., Villaseñor, Antonio, and Furlong, K.P., 2013
Seismicity of the Earth 1900–2012 Philippine Sea Plate and vicinity
U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2010–1083-M, scale 1:10,000,000, ''https://dx.doi.org/10.3133/ofr20101083m''. To the north, the Philippine Sea Plate meets the Okhotsk Plate at the Nankai Trough. The Philippine Sea Plate, the Amurian Plate, and the Okhotsk Plate meet near

Mount Fuji , or Fugaku, located on the island of Honshū, is the highest mountain in Japan, with a summit elevation of . It is the second-highest volcano located on an island in Asia (after Mount Kerinci on the island of Sumatra), and seventh-highest p ...

in Japan. The thickened crust of the Izu–Bonin–Mariana arc colliding with Japan constitutes the Izu Collision Zone. The east of the plate includes the Izu– Ogasawara (Bonin) and the

Mariana Islands The Mariana Islands (; also the Marianas; in Chamorro: ''Manislan Mariånas'') are a crescent-shaped archipelago comprising the summits of fifteen longitudinally oriented, mostly dormant volcanic mountains in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, betw ...

, forming the Izu–Bonin–Mariana Arc system. There is also a

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 ...

between the Philippine Sea Plate and the small Mariana Plate which carries the Mariana Islands. To the east, the

Pacific Plate The Pacific Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate that lies beneath the Pacific Ocean. At , it is the largest tectonic plate. The plate first came into existence 190 million years ago, at the triple junction between the Farallon, Phoenix, and Iza ...

subducts 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 ...

beneath the Philippine Sea Plate at the

Izu–Ogasawara Trench The , also known as Izu–Bonin Trench, is an oceanic trench in the western Pacific Ocean, consisting of the Izu Trench (at the north) and the Bonin Trench (at the south, west of the Ogasawara Plateau). It stretches from Japan to the northernmost ...

. To the south, the Philippine Sea Plate is bounded by the

Caroline Plate The Caroline Plate is a minor tectonic plate that straddles the Equator in the eastern hemisphere located north of New Guinea. It forms a subduction zone along the border with the Bird's Head Plate and the Woodlark Plate to the south. A transform ...

and

Bird's Head Plate The Bird's Head Plate is a minor tectonic plate incorporating the Bird's Head Peninsula, at the western end of the island of New Guinea. Hillis and Müller consider it to be moving in unison with the Pacific Plate. Bird considers it to be unconne ...

. To the west, the Philippine Sea Plate subducts under the

at the Philippine Trench and the

East Luzon Trench The Philippine Trench (also Philippine Deep, Mindanao Trench, and Mindanao Deep) is a submarine trench to the east of the Philippines. The trench is located in the Philippine sea of the western North Pacific Ocean and continues NNW-SSE. It has a ...

. (The adjacent rendition of Prof. Peter Bird's map is inaccurate in this respect.) To the northwest, the Philippine Sea Plate meets Taiwan and the

Nansei 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 ...

on the

Okinawa Plate The Okinawa Plate, or Okinawa Platelet, is a minor continental tectonic plate in the northern and eastern hemispheres stretching from the northern end of Taiwan to the southern tip of the island of Kyūshū. The Okinawa Plate hosts typical earthq ...

, and southern Japan on the Amurian Plate. It also meets the Yangtze Plate due northwest. Map00148 (28286522445)

References

External links

* High-resolution map o
Tectonic Plate Boundaries
* Map showin
Seismicity of the Earth, 1900‒2012: Philippine Sea Plate and Vicinity
United States Geological Survey Tectonic plates Natural history of Oceania Natural history of the Philippines Natural history of Taiwan Natural history of Japan Environment of Micronesia Philippine Sea Geology of the Philippines Geology of the Pacific Ocean {{tectonics-stub

See also

References

External links