Amurian microplate

"China Plate" redirects here. For the ceramic pottery, see Porcelain.

The Amurian microplate (or Amur microplate; also occasionally referred to as the China Plate, not to be confused with the South China Subplate)^{[citation needed]} is a minor tectonic plate in the northern and eastern hemispheres.

Amurian microplate
Type	Minor
Movement1	South
Speed1	10 mm/year
Features	Amur, Yalu, Korea, Manchuria, Lake Baikal, Sea of Japan, southwest Honshu (Kansai, Chūgoku), Shikoku, most of Kyushu
1Relative to the African plate

The Amurian Plate is named after the Amur River, which forms the border between the Russian Far East and Northeast China. It is bounded on the north, west, and southwest by the Eurasian plate, on the east by the Okhotsk Plate, to the southeast by the Philippine Sea plate along the Suruga Trough and the Nankai Trough, and the Okinawa plate, and the Yangtze plate.^[1]

The Amurian Plate may have been involved in the 1975 Haicheng earthquake and the 1976 Tangshan earthquake in China.^{[citation needed]}

Boundaries

The Amurian microplate is a division within the Eurasian plate, with an unknown western boundary, defined on the south by the Qinling suture zone^{[additional citation(s) needed]} in central China and the Baikal Rift Zone and Stanovoy Mountains on the north.^[2]

The Baikal Rift Zone is considered a boundary between the Amurian Plate and the Eurasian plate. GPS measurements indicate that the plate is slowly rotating counterclockwise. The boundary with the Okhotsk Plate is the eastern margin of the Sea of Japan.^[3]

Geography

It covers northeastern China, the Korean Peninsula, the Sea of Japan, Shikoku, Kyushu, southwest Honshu (Kansai, Chūgoku), eastern Mongolia and the south of Russian Far East.

See also

• North China Craton

References

1. Yu. F. Malyshev, et al. Deep structure of the Amur lithospheric Plate border zone.
2. Barnes, Gina L. (2022). Tectonic Archaeology: Subduction Zone Geology in Japan and Its Archaeological Implications. Archaeopress Publishing Limited. pp. 35–6.
3. Nakamura, K. (1983). "Possible nascent trench along the eastern Japan Sea as the convergent boundary between Eurasian and North American plates". Bull. Earthq. Res. Inst.

Further reading

• Dongping Wei and Tetsuzo Seno. 1998. Determination of the Amurian Plate Motion. Mantle Dynamics and Plate Interactions in East Asia, Geodynamics Series. v.27, edited by M. F. J. Flower et al., 419p, AGU, Washington D.C. (abstract Archived 2007-08-30 at the Wayback Machine)