The North Andes Plate or North Andes Block 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) located in the northern

Andes The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S ...

. It is squeezed between the faster moving

South American Plate The South American Plate is a major tectonic plate which includes the continent of South America as well as a sizable region of the Atlantic Ocean seabed extending eastward to the African Plate, with which it forms the southern part of the Mid-A ...

and the

Nazca Plate The Nazca Plate or Nasca Plate, named after the Nazca region of southern Peru, is an oceanic tectonic plate in the eastern Pacific Ocean basin off the west coast of South America. The ongoing subduction, along the Peru–Chile Trench, of the Na ...

to the southwest. Due to the

subduction 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 ...

of the Malpelo and Coiba Plates, this area is very prone to

volcanic A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often found where tectonic plates a ...

and

seismic Seismology (; from Ancient Greek σεισμός (''seismós'') meaning "earthquake" and -λογία (''-logía'') meaning "study of") is the scientific study of earthquakes and the propagation of elastic waves through the Earth or through other ...

activity, with many historic earthquakes.

Boundaries

The North Andes Plate is bound by (clockwise from north): #

Caribbean Plate The Caribbean Plate is a mostly oceanic tectonic plate underlying Central America and the Caribbean Sea off the north coast of South America. Roughly 3.2 million square kilometers (1.2 million square miles) in area, the Caribbean Plate borders ...

Malpelo Plate The Malpelo Plate is a small tectonic plate (microplate) located off the coasts west of Ecuador and Colombia. It is the 57th plate to be identified. It is named after Malpelo Island, the only emerged part of the plate. It is bounded on the west ...

(before 2017 considered part of

)Zhang et al., 2017 # Coiba Plate (before 2016 considered part of Nazca Plate)Chiarabba et al., 2016, p.22 # Panama Plate

Terranes

Coiba & Malpelo Plates and major seismic faults of Colombia

The Colombian part of the North Andes Plate is subdivided into several

terrane In geology, a terrane (; in full, a tectonostratigraphic terrane) is a crust fragment formed on a tectonic plate (or broken off from it) and accreted or " sutured" to crust lying on another plate. The crustal block or fragment preserves its own ...

s:Gómez Tapias et al., 2015, p.209

Tectonics

Subduction 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 ...

of the Coiba Plate underneath the North Andes Plate causes frequent earthquakes in the

Bucaramanga Nest The Bucaramanga Nest is a seismic region located in Colombia. It is named after Bucaramanga, Santander Santander may refer to: Places * Santander, Spain, a port city and capital of the autonomous community of Cantabria, Spain * Santander Departm ...

, the most seismically active area in the world. The

Bucaramanga-Santa Marta Fault The Bucaramanga-Santa Marta Fault (BSMF, BSF) or Bucaramanga-Santa Marta Fault System ( es, (Sistema de) Falla(s) de Bucaramanga-Santa Marta) is a major oblique transpressional sinistral strike-slip fault (wrench fault) in the departments of Magd ...

stretches along the plate for more than 600 kilometers from north to south. The plate boundary with the South American Plate is most tectonically active along a more than 900 kilometer long megaregional fault system; the Eastern Frontal Fault System. This fault system, extending into Ecuador and Venezuela all along the northern Andes, separates the terranes from the North Andes Plate from:

Boundaries

Terranes

Tectonics

References

Bibliography

Maps

Further reading