Okhotsk Plate

Map of the Okhotsk Plate and its neighbouring plates

The Okhotsk Plate is a tectonic plate covering the Sea of Okhotsk, the Kamchatka Peninsula, and Eastern Japan. It was formerly considered a part of the North American Plate, but recent studies indicate that it is an independent plate, bounded on the north by the North American Plate.^[1] The boundary is a left-lateral moving transform fault, the Ulakhan Fault. On the east, the plate is bounded by the Pacific Plate at the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench and the Japan Trench, on the south by the Philippine Sea Plate at the Nankai Trough, on the west by the Eurasian Plate, and possibly on the southwest by the Amurian Plate.

The boundary between Okhotsk Plate and Amurian Plate might be responsible for many strong earthquakes that occurred in the Sea of Japan as well as in the Sakhalin island, such as the M_W7.1 (M_S7.5 according to other sources) earthquake of May 27, 1995 in northern Sakhalin.^[2][3][4] The earthquake devastated Neftegorsk, and the town was not rebuilt after the earthquake.

The boundary between Okhotsk Plate and Pacific Plate is a subduction zone, where Pacific Plate subducts beneath the Okhotsk Plate. Many strong megathrust earthquakes occurred here, some of them among the largest on world record, including the Kamchatka earthquakes of 1737 (estimated M9.0~9.3) and 1952 (M9.0). Such strong megathrust earthquakes can also occur near the Kuril Islands, as the M8.3 earthquake of November 15, 2006,^[5][6] Hokkaido, as the M8.3 earthquake of September 26, 2003^[7][8] and the M9.0 2011 Tōhoku earthquake off the coast of Honshu.

GPS measurements and other studies show that the Okhotsk Plate is slowly rotating in a clockwise direction. Models indicate that it rotates 0.2 deg/Myr about a pole located north of Sakhalin.^[9]

References

Notes

1. ^ Apel et al., 2006; and Seno et al., 1996
2. ^ Tamura, Makoto; et al. (2002). "The ShalIow Seismicity in the Southern Part of Sakhalin". Geophysical Bulletin of Hokkaido University 65: 127–142. http://eprints.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/dspace/bitstream/2115/14308/1/65_p127-142.pdf. 
3. ^ "Earthquake Information for 1995". USGS. http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/1995/. 
4. ^ Arefiev, S. S.; et al. (2006). "Deep structure and tomographic imaging of strong earthquake source zones". Izvestiya Physics of the solid Earth 42 (10): 850–863. doi:10.1134/S1069351306100090. 
5. ^ http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/4231073/4231074/04231097.pdf?temp=x
6. ^ http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/eqinthenews/2006/usvcam/
7. ^ Watanabe, Tomoki; et al. (2006). "Seismological monitoring on the 2003 Tokachi-oki earthquake, derived from off Kushiro permanent cabled OBSs and land-based observations". Tectonophysics 426 (1–2): 107–118. doi:10.1016/j.tecto.2006.02.016. 
8. ^ http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/eqinthenews/2003/uszdap/
9. ^ Apel, et al., 2006

Bibliography

• Apel, E. V., R. Bürgmann, G. Steblov, N. Vasilenko, R. King, and A. Prytkov (2006). Independent active microplate tectonics of northeast Asia from GPS velocities and block modeling, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L11303, doi:10.1029/2006GL0260772.
• Seno, Tetsuzo; Sakurai, Taro; Stein, Seth (1996). "Can the Okhotsk plate be discriminated from the North American plate?". Journal of Geophysical Research 101 (B5): 11305–11315. doi:10.1029/96JB00532. 

External links

• Okhotsk Plate Modeling
• Joint US-Russia Workshop on the Plate Tectonic Evolution of Northeast Russia, Dec. 2004

This tectonics article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.v · Categories: Geology lists Tectonic plates Kamchatka Sea of Okhotsk Geology of Japan Geology of Russia Geology of the Pacific Ocean 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami Tectonics stubs Wikimedia Foundation. 2010. Игры ⚽ Нужно сделать НИР? Adrienne Mayor Conor Gill Look at other dictionaries: Okhotsk (disambiguation) — Okhotsk may refer to: Contents 1 Extraterrestrial 2 Japan 3 Russia 4 See also Extraterrestrial Okhotsk (crate …   Wikipedia Okhotsk (plaque tectonique) — Plaque d Okhotsk Pour les articles homonymes, voir Okhotsk (homonymie). Plaque d Okhotsk Éponyme …   Wikipédia en Français Plate tectonics — The tectonic plates of the world were mapped in the second half of the 20th century …   Wikipedia Okhotsk-Chukotka Volcanic Belt — The Okhotsk Chukotka Volcanic Belt (OCVB) is a Cretaceous volcanic belt in northeastern Eurasia. It is one of the largest subduction zone related volcanic provinces in the world, stretching some 3200 km and comprising about 2 million km3 of… …   Wikipedia Amurian Plate — China Plate redirects here. For the ceramic pottery, see fine china. Map of the Amurian Plate and the adjacent tectonic plates (in French) The Amurian Plate (or Amur Plate; also occasionally referred to as the China Plate) is a proposed… …   Wikipedia North American Plate —   The North American plate, shown in brown The North American Plate is a tectonic plate covering most of North America, Greenland, Cuba, Bahama …   Wikipedia Mariana Plate — Map of the Mariana Plate (as Mariannes ) and its neighbouring plates (in French) …   Wikipedia Philippine Plate — The Philippine Plate is a tectonic plate beneath the Pacific Ocean to the east of the Philippines. The Philippine plate comprises oceanic lithosphere that lies beneath the Philippine Sea, and so is often referred to as the Philippine Sea Plate… …   Wikipedia Okinawa Plate — Map of the Okinawa Plate and its neighbouring plates (in French) The Okinawa Plate is a long narrow tectonic plate stretching from the northern end of Taiwan to the southern tip of the island of Kyūshū. To the east lies the Ryukyu Trench and the… …   Wikipedia Eurasian Plate — The Eurasian Plate is a tectonic plate which includes most of the continent of Eurasia (a landmass consisting of the traditional continents of Europe and Asia), with the notable exceptions of the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian subcontinent, and …   Wikipedia 18+ © Academic, 2000-2024 Contact us: Technical Support, Advertising Dictionaries export, created on PHP, Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, MODx. Mark and share Search through all dictionaries Translate… Search Internet Share the article and excerpts Direct link … Do a right-click on the link above and select “Copy Link”