Plate data: Bird (2003), PB2002, converted by Hugo Ahlenius, Nordpil (ODC-By 1.0). Land: Natural Earth (India POV).
The Caribbean Plate lies between the North and South American Plates, with the Cocos Plate to the west. Its boundary with the Cocos Plate is convergent along its whole length in PB2002, and its boundary with the North American Plate is mostly transform.1 Bird (2003) counts it among the 14 large plates whose motion was described by the NUVEL-1A model.
PB2002 places the island of Martinique on this plate.2 USGS records that pyroclastic flows from the 1902 eruption of Mont Pelee on Martinique killed about 30,000 people. USGS describes pyroclastic flows as fast-moving, ground-hugging mixtures of hot volcanic debris, ash and gases that can travel at more than 150 km per hour (USGS).
Its southwestern and southern edges are crowded. Bird separates two small plates there. The Panama Plate covers Costa Rica and Panama, between the North Panama and South Panama deformed belts, both seismically active and mostly offshore. Its motion is best measured relative to Isla San Andres on the Caribbean Plate: it moves north at about 11 mm per year, with no apparent rotation. On the north side of the Panama Plate, the boundary with the Caribbean Plate is the frontal thrust of the North Panama deformed belt, a subduction boundary.
Farther east, the North Andes Plate overrides the Caribbean Plate. A slab of subducted Caribbean lithosphere dips at 17 degrees down to a depth of 275 km beneath it, and the earthquakes within the slab end eastward near Curacao and Aruba. Bird notes that this discovery of subduction proves that the Caribbean Plate does not extend, at the surface, south of the South Caribbean deformed belt (Bird 2003).
Caribbean Plate in numbers
Measured from its PB2002 outline, the Caribbean Plate covers about 3.0 million km², or 0.6% of the
Earth's surface. That makes it number 16 by area of the 52 plates in the model.
It spans from 9°N to 20°N and from 91°W to 57°W.
Its edge is about 8,999 km long, mostly convergent:
12%divergentDivergent boundary. Plates pull away from each other and new crust forms between them. Source (1,082 km)
, 47.3%convergentConvergent boundary. Plates move toward each other and crust is destroyed as one plate dives under another. Source (4,256 km)
and 40.7%transformTransform boundary. Plates slide horizontally past each other. Crust is neither made nor destroyed. Source (3,661 km)
.
Countries whose main landmass sits on this plate: Costa Rica, Dominican Rep., El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua and Puerto Rico. Countries that straddle a boundary
are listed under the plate that holds the center of their largest landmass.
Along its boundaries it moves a mean 1.9 cm/yr relative to its neighbors, fastest against the Cocos Plate. Bird (2003)
Neighboring plates Neighbors. Plates that share a boundary with this plate. Most plate movement happens along these narrow zones between plates. Source
The Caribbean Plate shares a boundary with 5 plates in PB2002, longest shared edge first.
The longest, about 3,509 km, is with the North American Plate; the shortest, about 546 km, is with the Cocos Plate.
