Caribbean plate
The Caribbean plate is a mainly oceanic tectonic plate . It lies below Central America and the Caribbean Sea on the north coast of South America .
The Caribbean plate is approximately 3.2 million square kilometers, making it a medium-sized plate. It is surrounded by the North American Plate in the north, the South American Plate in the east and southeast, the Nazca Plate in the southwest and the Coconut Plate in the west. Seismic activity, frequent earthquakes, as well as the occasional tsunamis and volcanic eruptions often occur at their borders .
Border types
The southern border of the North American Plate runs along the border of Belize , Guatemala and Honduras in Central America, north of the Cayman Rift and the south-east coast of Cuba , further north along Hispaniola , Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands . Part of the Puerto Rico Trench , the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean (approximately 8,400 meters deep), also lies on this boundary.
The eastern border is a subduction zone . The boundary between the North and South American plates in the Atlantic is undefined, so it is unclear whether one or possibly both is submerged under the Caribbean plate. Subductions form the volcanic islands of the arches of the Lesser Antilles from the Virgin Islands in the north and to the islands off the coast of Venezuela in the south. There are 17 active volcanoes on this border. The most active are: Soufrière Hills on Montserrat , Montagne Pelée in Martinique , La Grande Soufriére in Guadeloupe , Soufrière Saint Vincent in St. Vincent and the underwater volcano Kick-'em-Jenny , which is about 10 km north of Grenada .
Along the geological complex of the southern border, the Caribbean plate and the South American plate move together. This creates Trinidad (on the South American Plate) and Tobago (on the Caribbean Plate) as well as islands off the coast of Venezuela (including the Leeward Islands ) and Colombia . The southern border is in part the result of subduction.
Central America is on the western part of the plate. The coconut plate in the Pacific Ocean lies beneath the Caribbean plate, just off the western coast of Central America. This subduction forms the volcanoes of Guatemala , El Salvador , Nicaragua and Costa Rica .
The origin
It is believed that the Caribbean plate is a large magmatic province (English: l arge i gneous p rovince, LIP) that formed the Pacific Ocean several million years ago. As the Atlantic Ocean expanded, North and South America were pushed west, and the bottom of the Pacific Ocean began to plunge under the western edges of the American continent. The Caribbean plate is thicker and higher than the rest of the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Instead of overcoming the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, it is moving east to North and South America. With the formation of the Isthmus of Panama about 3 million years ago, the Caribbean plate lost its connection to the Pacific. Similar considerations exist for the Scotia plate , which is located at the southern end of the South American plate and is similarly shaped. According to more recent research results, however, there are indications that this gap closure of the Caribbean plate already took place 13 to 15 million years ago in the Middle Miocene .