Sunda Plate
The Sunda Plate is a minor tectonic plate straddling the equator in the eastern hemisphere on which the majority of Southeast Asia is located.[1]
| Sunda Plate | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Minor |
| Movement1 | east |
| Speed1 | 11–14 mm/year |
| Features | Southeast Asia, Borneo, Java, Sumatra, South China Sea |
| 1Relative to the African Plate | |
The Sunda Plate was formerly considered a part of the Eurasian Plate, but GPS measurements have confirmed its independent movement at 10 mm/yr eastward relative to Eurasia.[2]
Extent
The Sunda Plate includes the South China Sea, the Andaman Sea, southern parts of Vietnam and Thailand along with Malaysia and the islands of Borneo, Sumatra, Java, and part of Sulawesi in Indonesia, plus the south-western Philippines islands of Palawan and the Sulu Archipelago.
The Sunda is bounded in the east by the Philippine Mobile Belt, Molucca Sea Collision Zone, Molucca Sea Plate, Banda Sea Plate and Timor Plate; to the south and west by the Australian Plate; and to the north by the Burma Plate, Eurasian Plate; and Yangtze Plate. The Indo-Australian Plate dips beneath the Sunda Plate along the Sunda Trench, which generates frequent earthquakes.[1]
The eastern, southern, and western boundaries of the Sunda Plate are tectonically complex and seismically active. Only the northern boundary is relatively quiescent.
References
- Whitten, T; Soeriaatmadja, R. E.; Suraya A. A. (1996). The Ecology of Java and Bali. Hong Kong: Periplus Editions Ltd. p. 87. ISBN 978-9625938882.
- Socquet, Anne; Wim Simons; Christophe Vigny; Robert McCaffrey; Cecep Subarya; Dina Sarsito; Boudewijn Ambrosius; Wim Spakman (2006). "Microblock rotations and fault coupling in SE Asia triple junction (Sulawesi, Indonesia) from GPS and earthquake slip vector data" (PDF). Journal of Geophysical Research. 111 (B8). Bibcode:2006JGRB..111.8409S. doi:10.1029/2005JB003963. ISSN 0148-0227.
Further reading
- Bird, P. (2003) An updated digital model of plate boundaries, Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems, 4(3), 1027, doi:10.1029/2001GC000252. also available as a PDF file (13 mb)
