Where am ILOCATED

Caribbean Plate

The Caribbean Plate is the 16th-largest of the 52 plates in the PB2002 plate model, covering 3.0 million km² (1.1 million sq mi), or 0.6% of Earth’s surface. The Caribbean Sea, Central America from southern Guatemala to northern Costa Rica, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Puerto Rico and the Lesser Antilles.

Caribbean Plate on the globe, with its boundaries coloured by typeCaribbean PlateNorth American PlateSouth American PlateCocos Plate
Caribbean Plate Convergent Divergent Transform
Area
3.0 million km² (1.1 million sq mi)
Share of Earth’s surface
0.6%
Speed across the plate
0.8 to 1.9 cm a year (0.3 to 0.7 in)
Direction at its center
Toward the northeast
Length of its edges
9,000 km (5,590 mi)
Neighboring plates
5
Edges by type
47% convergent · 12% divergent · 41% transform
Volcanoes on it
59 active in the past ~12,000 years
What plate am I on?All tectonic plates

What happens at its edges

Its northern and southern edges are mostly sideways boundaries: it slides past the North American Plate through Cuba’s south coast, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, the zone of Haiti’s 2010 earthquake, and past South America along Venezuela.

At its eastern edge the Atlantic floor sinks beneath the Lesser Antilles, building volcanic islands such as Montserrat, Martinique and Saint Vincent. On the Pacific side the Cocos Plate sinks beneath Central America.

How fast it moves, and which way

At its center (15.0°N, 73.2°W) the Caribbean Plate moves about 1.2 cm (0.5 in) a year toward the northeast. Because a plate turns around a pole rather than sliding in a straight line, the speed changes across it: from 0.8 cm (0.3 in) a year to 1.9 cm (0.7 in) a year, with an area-weighted average of 1.3 cm a year. That average makes it the 48th fastest of the 52 plates.

These figures are measured against the average motion of all the plates together (the “no-net-rotation” frame), which is how plate speeds are usually quoted. Measured against the North American Plate instead, the Caribbean Plate moves about 1.8 cm (0.7 in) a year toward the east at its center.

In the model it rotates about a pole at 32.8°N, 88.1°W at 0.286° per million years. The speeds are averages over years to millions of years of measurement; earthquakes move the ground near a boundary in sudden steps instead.

Neighboring plates and boundaries

Its edges run for 9,000 km (5,590 mi): 47% convergent, where plates move together; 12% divergent, where they move apart; and 41% transform, where they slide past each other. It sinks beneath the North Andes Plate at subduction zones. The South American Plate and Cocos Plate sink beneath it.

NeighborShared edgeBoundary typesRelative speed
North American Plate3,510 km (2,180 mi)Transform 71% · Divergent 19% · Convergent 10%1.7 cm a yearup to 1.8 cm
South American Plate2,270 km (1,410 mi)Convergent 53% · Transform 47%1.9 cm a yearup to 2.0 cm
North Andes Plate1,400 km (870 mi)Convergent 66% · Divergent 28% · Transform 6%1.2 cm a yearup to 1.3 cm
Panama Plate1,280 km (790 mi)Convergent 97%1.1 cm a yearup to 1.1 cm
Cocos Plate550 km (340 mi)Convergent 100%7.6 cm a yearup to 8.0 cm

Relative speed is how fast the two plates move against each other along their shared edge, averaged over its length.

Countries and territories on the Caribbean Plate

22 lie entirely on it; the other 5 are split between plates. The share is the part of each country’s land on this plate.

Volcanoes on the Caribbean Plate

The Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program lists 59 volcanoes on this plate that have been active in roughly the past 12,000 years. The most recent eruptions on record:

Where the edges are blurred

Parts of this plate lie in the west central Atlantic zone, which the model marks as broad belts of deformation rather than sharp plate edges. There the motion between plates is spread over many faults, and a single boundary line is a simplification.

Sources

Outline, area, boundary types and motion: Bird, P. (2003), An updated digital model of plate boundaries, Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems, 4(3), 1027, doi:10.1029/2001GC000252. Released by its author into the public domain (CC0 1.0). Areas are the model’s published figures; speeds, directions, boundary lengths and countries are calculated from its outlines, boundary steps and rotation poles.

Volcanoes: Global Volcanism Program, Smithsonian Institution, Volcanoes of the World (v. 5.4.0). Country outlines: Natural Earth.