North American Plate

What happens at its edges

Its eastern edge runs along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where it pulls away from the Eurasian and African plates and new sea floor forms. The ridge rises above sea level in Iceland, so the west of the island, including Reykjavík, rides on this plate.

The western edge is far busier. The Juan de Fuca Plate sinks beneath it at the Cascadia subduction zone, feeding volcanoes such as Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier; the Pacific Plate slides past it along the San Andreas and Queen Charlotte faults; and in Alaska the Pacific Plate sinks beneath it along the Aleutian Trench, the source of the 1964 Alaska earthquake.

Much of northern Japan lies on the Okhotsk Plate in this model. Many maps include that region in the North American Plate.

How fast it moves, and which way

At its center (57.9°N, 86.1°W) the North American Plate moves about 2.0 cm (0.8 in) a year toward the west. Because a plate turns around a pole rather than sliding in a straight line, the speed changes across it: from 0.7 cm (0.3 in) a year to 2.3 cm (0.9 in) a year, with an area-weighted average of 1.9 cm a year. That average makes it the 42nd 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 Pacific Plate instead, the North American Plate moves about 1.5 cm (0.6 in) a year toward the west-southwest at its center.

In the model it rotates about a pole at 4.8°S, 86.5°W at 0.206° 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 34,360 km (21,350 mi): 29% convergent, where plates move together; 40% divergent, where they move apart; and 30% transform, where they slide past each other. It sinks beneath the Okhotsk Plate at subduction zones. The Pacific Plate, Cocos Plate, Juan de Fuca Plate and Rivera Plate sink beneath it.

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 North American Plate

8 lie entirely on it; the other 6 are split between plates. The share is the part of each country’s land on this plate.

• Canada all
• United States about 99%
• Greenland all
• Mexico about 93%
• Russia about 10%
• Cuba about 99%
• Guatemala about 89%
• Iceland about 56%
• Belize all
• Bahamas all
• Turks and Caicos Islands all
• Cayman Islands all
• Saint Pierre and Miquelon all
• Bermuda all

Volcanoes on the North American Plate

The Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program lists 200 volcanoes on this plate that have been active in roughly the past 12,000 years. The most recent eruptions on record:

• Great Sitkin United States, 2026
• Popocatepetl Mexico, 2026
• Santa Maria Guatemala, 2026
• Fuego Guatemala, 2026
• Atka Volcanic Complex United States, 2025
• Reykjanes Iceland, 2025

Where the edges are blurred

Parts of this plate lie in the Laptev Sea and western Aleutians zones, 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.