Asia-Pacific: Tectonic Plates and Faults

Tectonic Plates and Fault Lines Eurasian Okhotsk The region is home to extremes in Plate Plate elevation and the world's most active Amur Plate seismic and volcanic activity. Southwest MONGOLIA of India, the Maldives has a maximum height of just 230cm, while far to the north, the Tibetan Plateau averages over DPR KOREA JAPAN 4,500m across its 2.5 million square JAMMU & KASHMIR CHINA kilometres and is home to all 14 of the AKSAI CHIN RO KOREA world's peaks above 8,000 metres. The Himalaya were born 70 million years ago BHUTAN when the Arabian Plate collided with the ARUNASHAL PRADESH NEPAL Eurasian plate. The Pacific Ring of Fire is a belt of oceanic trenches, island arcs, volcanic VIET INDIA MYANMAR NAM mountain ranges and plate movements LAO that encircles the basin of the Pacific PDR Philippine BANGLADESH Ocean. The ring is home to 90% of the THAILAND Plate Northern Mariana Pacific Plate world's earthquakes - 95% if the Alpide PHILIPPINES Guam (US) Islands (US) belt is included, which runs through Java CAMBODIA and Sumatra. The Ring of Fire is a direct consequence of plate tectonics and the FEDERATED MARSHALL movement and collisions of crustal PALAU SRI LANKA BRUNEI STATES OF ISLANDS plates, with the northwestward moving MICRONESIA MALAYSIADARUSSALAM MALDIVES Pacific plate subducted beneath the Aleutian Islands arc in the north, along KIRIBATI the Kamchatka peninsula and Japan in the west. To the south a number of SINGAPORE NAURU smaller tectonic plates are in collision INDONESIA with the Pacific plate from the Mariana Islands, the Philippines, Bougainville, PAPUA NEW TUVALU GUINEA SOLOMON Tonga, and New Zealand. TIMOR-LESTE ISLANDS Depth (m) Elevation (m) Below 5,000 250 VANUATU FRENCH SAMOA POLYNESIA 5,000 500 Indo-Austalian FIJI 4,000 750 Plate COOK 3,000 1,000 ISLANDS TONGA 2,000 1,500 Somali 1,000 2,000 NEW 500 2,500 Plate AUSTRALIA CALEDONIA 100 3,000 Volcano 4,000 Faultline 5,000 Plate boundary 7,500 Above 7,500 NEW ZEALAND

Antarctic 0 1,000 2,000 Plate Kilometers

The boundaries and names shown and the designations used on this map do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations. Creation date: Dec 2014 Map Doc Name: OCHA_ROAP_Tectonics_v1_2014 Sources: UN Cartographic Section, Global Discovery, NASA, Columbia University, Smithsonian Institute Feedback: [email protected]