Convergent Boundary Map

Last updated 11 October 2026

What is a convergent boundary?

At a convergent boundary Convergent boundary. Plates move toward each other and crust is destroyed as one plate dives under another. Source two plates move toward each other. Because Earth has not grown in size for hundreds of millions of years, USGS reasons, crust has to be destroyed at these boundaries about as fast as it is made at divergent ones. What happens depends on the kind of crust on each side.

Where ocean floor meets a continent, the denser oceanic plate sinks under it at a subduction zone Subduction zone. Where one plate sinks under another and back into the mantle, usually marked by a deep ocean trench. Source , leaving a trench Ocean trench. A long, narrow trough in the sea floor, 8 to 10 km deep, where one plate bends down under another. Source 8 to 10 km deep. The Nazca Plate sinking beneath South America at the Peru-Chile Trench built the Andes and their volcanoes. Where two ocean plates meet, one sinks under the other: the Pacific Plate meets the Philippine Sea Plate at the Mariana Trench, whose Challenger Deep reaches nearly 11,000 m, and the melting slab feeds a curved chain of volcanic islands, an island arc.

Where two continents meet, neither sinks easily. India ran into Asia about 50 million years ago and the crust piled up into the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau, which averages about 4,600 m high. PB2002 splits this type into subduction zones, oceanic convergent boundaries and continental convergent boundaries. See the subduction zones map for the first of these.

How the three types compare

Data source: PB2002 plate model, Bird (2003), converted by Hugo Ahlenius, Nordpil, ODC-By 1.0.

Key facts

1. PB2002 maps 91,765 km of convergent boundary, 35% of all plate boundaries. Bird (2003)
2. Subduction zones (SUB) make up 51,309 km, with a mean speed of 62.3 mm/yr.
3. Oceanic convergent boundarys (OCB) make up 17,447 km, with a mean speed of 17.6 mm/yr.
4. Continental convergent boundarys (CCB) make up 23,009 km, with a mean speed of 26.2 mm/yr.
5. 99 pairs of plates meet along a convergent boundary. The longest shared stretch is between the North American and Pacific plates: 4,746 km.
6. The fastest convergent step is between the Tonga and Pacific plates near 15°S, 173°W: 263.1 mm/yr (26.3 cm/yr).

Plate pairs on convergent boundaries

The plates that share the most convergent boundary, by length. Speed is the relative velocity across the boundary Relative plate velocity. How fast one plate moves compared with its neighbor across a boundary, in millimeters per year. Source , averaged over its length. Plate names link to their pages where we have one.

Data source: PB2002 plate model, Bird (2003), converted by Hugo Ahlenius, Nordpil, ODC-By 1.0.

Longest convergent segments

A segment here is one unbroken run of the same boundary class between the same two plates. The location is the middle of the run.

Data source: PB2002 plate model, Bird (2003), converted by Hugo Ahlenius, Nordpil, ODC-By 1.0.

Speeds range from 0.4 mm/yr to 263.1 mm/yr along this type. For every boundary in one view see the plate boundaries map, compare with the other types: divergent and transform , or see how fast plates move on the plate motion map. All plates are on the tectonic plates map.