Tonga plate
Small tectonic plate in the southwest Pacific Ocean
The Tonga plate is a small southwest Pacific tectonic plate or microplate. It is centered at approximately 19° S. latitude and 173° E. longitude. The plate is an elongated plate oriented NNE-SSW and is a northward continuation of the Kermadec linear zone north of New Zealand. The plate is bounded on the east and north by the Pacific plate, on the northwest by the Niuafo’ou microplate, on the west and south by the Indo-Australian plate. The Tonga plate is subducting the Pacific plate along the Tonga Trench. This subduction turns into a transform fault boundary north of Tonga. An active rift or spreading center separates the Tonga plate from the Australian plate and the Niuafo’ou microplate to the west. The Tonga plate is seismically very active and is rotating clockwise.
These were the plates that moved when the 2009 tsunami hit Samoa.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Tonga plate”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Niuafo'ou Plate map-fr.png by Sting and Rémih, CC BY-SA 2.5
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