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Okhotsk Plate


My Blogs (olelog) are mainly based on my daily reading of earth science news.

Here on whatonearth.olehnielsen.dk I try to weave some of the pieces together to a greater whole with added background info.

 Plate Tectonics   Spreading Ridges    Triple Junctions 

The Okhotsk Plate is a continental tectonic plate covering the Sea of Okhotsk, the Kamchatka Peninsula, and Eastern Japan. It was considered a part of the North American Plate, but recent studies show that it is an independent plate. It is bounded on the north by the North American Plate, on the east by the Pacific Plate at the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench and the Japan Trench, on the south by the Philippine Plate at the Nankai Trough, on the west by the Eurasian Plate, and possibly on the southwest by the Amurian Plate. (See The Russian peninsula Kamchatka is not American). The location of the Okhotsk-Eurasia boundary is poorly constrained. The Okhotsk plate is being compressed and extruded from between North America and Eurasia.

Moma Rift

The Cenozoic Moma rift system is a major tectonic feature in northeast Russia. It is composed of a series of basins (Selennyakh, Kyrin, Lower Moma, Upper Moma, etc.) filled with up to one km thick and bounded by the Chersky Range (up to 3100 m high) on the southwest and the Moma Range (up to 2400 m high) on the northeast. Northeast of the Moma Range is the Indigirka-Zyryanka foreland basin, composed of thick, up to 2.5 km, Eocene, Oligocene, and Miocene coal-bearing sequences, while on the southwestern side of the Chersky Range there are a number of piedmont basins (Tuostakh, Upper Adycha, Derbeke, etc.) containing up to several hundred meters of Miocene and Oligocene coal-bearing deposits. The intracontinental Moma rift system developed in the Late Miocene-Middle Pleistocene and has lost its activity by now and it is not involved in the formation of seismogenic structures of the region.



Okhotsk Plate treated in Olelog

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