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.
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.
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