Tectonic plates
The Earth’s outer shell is split into rigid plates that move a few centimetres a year. Almost all earthquakes and volcanoes happen along their boundaries, where plates move apart, slide past each other or collide. Click a plate on the map to see its card.
- Each colour is a plate
- Pacific Ring of Fire
- Earthquake of magnitude 6 or more (larger if stronger)
- Holocene volcano
- Plates move apart (ridges, rifts)
- Plates slide past each other (transform faults)
- Plates collide
- Subduction: one plate sinks under the other
Plates and boundaries: Bird (2003), version by H. Ahlenius (ODC-BY). Earthquakes: USGS. Volcanoes: Smithsonian Institution, Global Volcanism Program. Relief: GEBCO Compilation Group (2026) GEBCO 2026 Grid. Map: © Protomaps, © OpenStreetMap.
Key words
- Tectonic plate
- A rigid piece of the Earth’s outer shell. Plates move slowly over the hotter, softer part of the mantle and meet along their boundaries.
- Lithosphere
- The crust and the uppermost mantle, rigid together: it is the thickness of the plates, about a hundred kilometres on average, thinner under the oceans and thicker under the continents.
- Plate boundary
- The line where two plates meet. Depending on how they move against each other, the boundary is divergent, transform or convergent; in subduction one plate sinks under the other.
- Plate speed
- A few centimetres a year, about as fast as fingernails grow. The figures on this page are the speed of one plate relative to its neighbour, along the boundary, in millimetres a year.
Three ways to meet
- Plates move apart (ridges, rifts)
- Plates move apart: ridges form in the middle of the oceans, rift valleys such as the East African Rift on the continents. New crust is made; earthquakes are usually not very strong, volcanoes mostly under the sea.
- Plates slide past each other (transform faults)
- Plates slide past each other without making or destroying crust. These are transform faults, like the San Andreas in California or the North Anatolian in Turkey: earthquakes can be strong, there are almost no volcanoes.
- Plates collide
- Two plates collide. When both are continental neither sinks, and the crust folds and rises: that is how the Himalayas and the Alps were formed.
- Subduction: one plate sinks under the other
- One plate, usually oceanic and heavier, sinks under the other into the mantle. In front there is a deep trench, above it a chain of volcanoes. The strongest earthquakes happen here, even above magnitude 9, and many tsunamis.
The Earth’s plates
- Plates
- 52
- Large, over 10 million km²
- 10
- Microplates, under 1 million km²
- 32
- Length of the boundaries
- 260,108 km
- Plates move apart (ridges, rifts): 94,741 km
- Plates slide past each other (transform faults): 73,764 km
- Plates collide: 40,453 km
- Subduction: one plate sinks under the other: 51,150 km
According to the model of Bird (2003). Other models count the plates differently: for example they join the African and Somali plates, or the Indian and Australian, and then there are seven large plates. Lengths measured on the sphere.
The Pacific Ring of Fire
Around the Pacific Ocean, oceanic plates sink under their neighbours almost everywhere: from New Zealand to Japan, from the Aleutians to Alaska and along the whole coast of the Americas down to Chile. This is the Ring of Fire, with the deepest trenches, the volcanoes and the strongest earthquakes on the planet.
- Length of the Ring’s boundaries
- 47,585 km
- M6+ earthquakes since 1900 in the Ring
- 66%
- M7+ earthquakes since 1900 in the Ring
- 68%
- Holocene volcanoes in the Ring
- 51%
- Volcanoes with eruptions since 1900 in the Ring
- 59%
There is no official boundary of the Ring of Fire. Here it is made of the convergent and subduction boundaries of the plates of the Pacific and its island arcs (Bird 2003), plus subduction under southern Chile; an earthquake or volcano is in the Ring if it lies within 300 km of one of these boundaries: 9,598 earthquakes out of 14,477 (USGS, magnitude 6 or more since 1900) and 617 volcanoes out of 1,214 (Smithsonian, Holocene). The Sunda Trench, south of Sumatra and Java, is in the Indian Ocean and is not counted here.
All the plates
From the largest to the smallest. The speed is the highest among those of the plate’s boundaries, relative to the neighbouring plates.
The large plates
| Plate | Area (km²) | Of the Earth | Top speed (mm/yr) | Main countries on it | On the map |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pacific Plate | 104,592,083 | 20.5% | 261 | Mexico, New Zealand, United States of America, Solomon Islands … | |
| African Plate | 58,474,768 | 11.5% | 34 | Democratic Republic of the Congo, Algeria, Sudan, Libya … | |
| Antarctic Plate | 58,152,399 | 11.4% | 94 | only sea and small islands | |
| North American Plate | 55,433,097 | 10.9% | 75 | Canada, United States of America, Greenland, Mexico … | |
| Eurasian Plate | 48,558,023 | 9.5% | 52 | Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Iran … | |
| Australian Plate | 45,984,105 | 9.0% | 129 | Australia, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, New Zealand … | |
| South American Plate | 41,824,613 | 8.2% | 74 | Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela … | |
| Somali Plate | 19,154,568 | 3.8% | 49 | Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, Kenya … | |
| Nazca Plate | 16,101,056 | 3.2% | 151 | only sea and small islands | |
| Indian Plate | 12,434,852 | 2.4% | 52 | India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh … |
The medium plates
| Plate | Area (km²) | Of the Earth | Top speed (mm/yr) | Main countries on it | On the map |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sunda Plate | 8,916,108 | 1.7% | 107 | Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines … | |
| Philippine Sea Plate | 5,443,755 | 1.1% | 132 | Philippines, Taiwan, Japan | |
| Amur Plate | 5,303,353 | 1.0% | 47 | Russia, China, Mongolia, Japan … | |
| Arabian Plate | 4,904,123 | 0.96% | 36 | Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iraq, Oman … | |
| Okhotsk Plate | 3,037,127 | 0.60% | 89 | Russia, Japan | |
| Caribbean Plate | 2,964,700 | 0.58% | 73 | Nicaragua, Honduras, Dominican Republic, Haiti … | |
| Cocos Plate | 2,931,776 | 0.57% | 126 | only sea and small islands | |
| Yangtze Plate | 2,201,899 | 0.43% | 79 | China, Taiwan | |
| Scotia Plate | 1,700,694 | 0.33% | 81 | Chile, Argentina | |
| Caroline Plate | 1,528,182 | 0.30% | 51 | only sea and small islands |
The 32 microplates
| Plate | Area (km²) | Of the Earth | Top speed (mm/yr) | Main countries on it | On the map |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| North Andes Plate | 971,791 | 0.19% | 48 | Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Panama | |
| Altiplano Plate | 832,152 | 0.16% | 57 | Bolivia, Peru, Chile | |
| Banda Sea Plate | 695,907 | 0.14% | 55 | Indonesia | |
| New Hebrides Plate | 643,470 | 0.13% | 129 | Vanuatu | |
| Anatolian Plate | 575,613 | 0.11% | 25 | Turkey, Cyprus | |
| Bird’s Head Plate | 525,647 | 0.10% | 107 | Indonesia | |
| Burma Plate | 515,363 | 0.10% | 46 | Indonesia, India | |
| Kermadec Plate | 505,359 | 0.10% | 96 | New Zealand | |
| Woodlark Plate | 453,070 | 0.09% | 102 | Papua New Guinea, Indonesia | |
| Mariana Plate | 420,772 | 0.08% | 77 | only sea and small islands | |
| Molucca Sea Plate | 418,101 | 0.08% | 91 | Indonesia | |
| North Bismarck Plate | 388,135 | 0.08% | 142 | Papua New Guinea | |
| Timor Plate | 353,275 | 0.07% | 40 | Indonesia, East Timor | |
| Okinawa Plate | 324,727 | 0.06% | 132 | Japan | |
| Aegean Sea Plate | 321,891 | 0.06% | 30 | Greece, Turkey | |
| South Bismarck Plate | 309,086 | 0.06% | 142 | Papua New Guinea | |
| Panama Plate | 273,734 | 0.05% | 73 | Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia | |
| Juan de Fuca Plate | 256,343 | 0.05% | 56 | only sea and small islands | |
| Tonga Plate | 253,617 | 0.05% | 261 | only sea and small islands | |
| Balmoral Reef Plate | 195,387 | 0.04% | 69 | only sea and small islands | |
| Sandwich Plate | 184,411 | 0.04% | 81 | only sea and small islands | |
| Easter Plate | 166,979 | 0.03% | 118 | only sea and small islands | |
| Conway Reef Plate | 144,452 | 0.03% | 107 | only sea and small islands | |
| Solomon Sea Plate | 128,670 | 0.03% | 102 | only sea and small islands | |
| Niuafo’ou Plate | 124,280 | 0.02% | 130 | only sea and small islands | |
| Maoke Plate | 115,306 | 0.02% | 78 | Indonesia | |
| Rivera Plate | 100,895 | 0.02% | 80 | only sea and small islands | |
| Juan Fernández Plate | 97,681 | 0.02% | 162 | only sea and small islands | |
| Shetland Plate | 72,215 | 0.01% | 10 | only sea and small islands | |
| Futuna Plate | 32,024 | 0.01% | 92 | only sea and small islands | |
| Galápagos Plate | 14,625 | 0.00% | 115 | only sea and small islands | |
| Manus Plate | 8,219 | 0.00% | 89 | only sea and small islands |
Areas measured on the sphere from the outlines of Bird (2003); the countries are those with at least 1,000 km² on the plate, largest first.
The other pages
- Earthquakes Earthquakes
- Volcanoes Volcanoes
- Tsunamis Tsunamis
Sources: P. Bird (2003), An updated digital model of plate boundaries, version by H. Ahlenius (ODC-BY); USGS, earthquakes of magnitude 6 or more (public domain); Smithsonian Institution, Global Volcanism Program, Volcanoes of the World.