The boundary between the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate in the region around Japan has been described as "shifty".[7] There are different maps for it based on recent tectonics, seismicity and earthquakefocal mechanism. The simplest plate geometry draws the boundary from theNansen Ridge through a broadzone of deformation in North Asia to theSea of Okhotsk then south throughSakhalin Island andHokkaido to the triple junction in theJapan Trench.[8] But this simple view has been successfully challenged by more recent research. During the 1970s, Japan was thought to be located on the Eurasian plate at a quadruple junction with the North American plate when the eastern boundary of the North American plate was drawn through southernHokkaido.[9][10]
All volcanic eruptions in Iceland, such as the 1973 eruption ofEldfell, the 1783 eruption ofLaki and the 2010 eruption ofEyjafjallajökull, are caused by the North American and the Eurasian plates moving apart, which is a result ofdivergent plate boundary forces.
Theconvergent boundary between the Eurasian plate and theIndian plate formed the Himalayas mountain range.The geodynamics ofCentral Asia is dominated by the interaction between the Eurasian plate and the Indian plate. In this area, many sub-plates or crust blocks have been recognized, which form theCentral Asian and theEast Asian transit zones.[11]
^Machado, Adriane; Azevedo, José M. M.; Alemeida, Delia P.M.; Farid Chemale Jr. (2008)."Geochemistry of Volcanic Rocks from Faial Island (Azores)"(PDF). Lisbon: e-Terra, GEOTIC – Sociedade Geológica de Portugal. pp. 1–14. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 11 May 2011. Retrieved17 April 2010.
^"The Bekten Fault: the palaeoseismic behaviour and kinematic characteristics of an intervening segment of the North Anatolian Fault Zone, Southern Marmara Region, Turkey".Geodinamica Acta.28 (4). 2016.doi:10.1080/09853111.2016.1208524.The Anatolian tectonic block (sub-plate) is being affected by converging plate movements that occur between the Arabian-African and Eurasian plates (e.g. Armijo, Meyer, Hubert, & Barka, Citation1999; Bozkurt, Citation2001; Jackson & McKenzie, Citation1984; Le Pichon, Chamot-Rooke, Lallemant, Noomen, & Veis, Citation1995; McKenzie, Citation1972, 1978; Şengör, Citation1979, 1980; Sengör, Görür, & Saroglu, Citation1985; Taymaz, Jackson, & McKenzie, Citation1991). As a result of this collision, the North Anatolian (NAF) and East Anatolian (EAF) transform faults have been formed. The Anatolian sub-plate is bounded to the north and east by these faults. The impingement started to move the sub-plate westward and resulted compression and uplifts near the Karlıova triple junction in the Eastern Anatolia. As a result of anti-clockwise rotational movement of the Anatolian sub-plate in a westward direction four different neotectonic regions have been formed namely: (1) East Anatolian compressional region, (2) North Anatolian region, (3) Central Anatolian 'ova' region and (4) West Anatolian extensional region (Sengör et al., Citation1985).
^Van Horne, A.; Sato, H.; Ishiyama, T.; Kato, N. (December 2015)."The Problem With the Plate Boundary in the Sea of Japan".AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts T31B-2879.Hence, the problem: geodetic models imply a plate boundary between Japan and Eurasia, but published geological and seismological evidence does not support placing it in the Japan Sea or at the ISTL. If, as studies show, almost half of the convergence between North America and Eurasia is taken up in Hokkaido and across N Japan, the small amount of remaining convergence may be difficult to distinguish given the large elastic response in the upper plate (N Honshu) after the 2011 Tohoku-oki (M9.0) earthquake, and strong coupling at the megathrust. To draw such a plate boundary on tectonic maps implies a degree of certainty about its location which is unfounded
^Barnes, Gina L. (2022).Tectonic Archaeology: Subduction Zone Geology in Japan and Its Archaeological Implications. Archaeopress Publishing Limited. pp. 35–6.
^Volcanic and Tectonic Hazard Assessment for Nuclear Facilities. Cambridge University Press. p. 164.
^"Up-to-Date Geodynamics and Seismicity of Central Asia" by Y. Gatinsky, D. Rundquist, G. Vladova, T. Prokhodova
