The Conway Reef Plate is a small
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 ...
(
microplate
A microplate, also known as a microtiter plate (''Microtiter'' is a registered trademark in the United States, therefore it should not be used generically without attribution), microwell plate or multiwell, is a flat plate with multiple "wells" ...
) located in the south
Pacific
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...
west of
Fiji. The western boundary is with the
New Hebrides Plate while the eastern is with the
Australian Plate
The Australian Plate is a major tectonic plate in the eastern and, largely, southern hemispheres. Originally a part of the ancient continent of Gondwana, Australia remained connected to India and Antarctica until approximately when India broke ...
. A short
transform boundary
A transform fault or transform boundary, is a fault along a plate boundary where the motion is predominantly horizontal. It ends abruptly where it connects to another plate boundary, either another transform, a spreading ridge, or a subductio ...
also exists with the
Balmoral Reef Plate. Much of the plate underlies the south central portion of the
North Fiji Basin
The North Fiji Basin (NFB) is an oceanic basin west of Fiji in the south-west Pacific Ocean. It is an actively spreading back-arc basin delimited by the Fiji islands to the east, the inactive Vitiaz Trench to the north, the Vanuatu/New Hebrides ...
.
Within the North Fiji Basin it lies between the spreading centers of the Central Spreading Ridge on the west and the West Fiji Ridge on the east. The plate is rotating counterclockwise with respect to all of its neighbours.
The plate's existence was first modelled in 2003 by Bird. Its boundaries and
angular momentum
In physics, angular momentum (rarely, moment of momentum or rotational momentum) is the rotational analog of linear momentum. It is an important physical quantity because it is a conserved quantity—the total angular momentum of a closed syst ...
were further defined in 2011 and 2018 with refinement of
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 ...
deformation and strain rate.
The region is complex and may well have several other microplates or
blocks..
See also
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North Fiji Basin
The North Fiji Basin (NFB) is an oceanic basin west of Fiji in the south-west Pacific Ocean. It is an actively spreading back-arc basin delimited by the Fiji islands to the east, the inactive Vitiaz Trench to the north, the Vanuatu/New Hebrides ...
References
Sources
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Tectonic plates
Geology of the Pacific Ocean
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