The
Philippine Plate is a
tectonic plate beneath the
Pacific Ocean to the east of the
Philippines. The Philippine plate comprises oceanic
lithosphere that lies beneath the
Philippine Sea, and so is often referred to as the
Philippine Sea Plate because most of the
Philippines lie west of this plate. The plate is bounded by the
Philippine Trench to the southwest,
Taiwan and the
Ryukyu islands to the northwest,
Japan to the north, the
Izu-
Ogasawara (Bonin) and
Mariana islands to the east, and
Yap,
Palau, and easternmost
Indonesia (
Halmahera} to the south. The eastern part of the plate is occupied by the
Izu-Bonin-Mariana Arc system.
The easterly side of the Philippine Sea Plate is a convergent boundary with the subducting Pacific Plate. The Philippine Plate is bounded on the west by the Eurasian Plate, on the south partly by the Caroline Plate, on the north by the North American Plate and possibly by the Amurian Plate.
Collision of the Philippine Plate and the Eurasian Plate formed Taiwan and continues today. In the northernmost part of the plate, thickened crust of the Izu-Bonin-Mariana arc is colliding with Japan to form the Izu Collision Zone.
The Philippine Plate forms the floor of this sea and it is one of the 5 minor lithospheric plates, about the size of the Arabian plate (Anderson, 2002). It is unique among all of the plates that now exist on Earth because it is completely surrounded by subduction zones. The Philippine Sea Plate is divided into a western “trapped” and inactive half and an eastern part that formed and continues to grow as a result of westward subduction of the Pacific Plate. The western half is doomed to disappear someday because it is being subducted to the west and north under the Eurasian Plate. This eastern half is composed of several N-S ridges (from W to E Kyushu-Palau Ridge (KPR), Parece Vela-Shikoku West Marian Ridge (WMR large backarc basins (Fig. 1). The Izu-Ogasawara (Bonin) and Mariana islands and submarine volcanoes is sometimes referred to as the IBM (Izu-Bonin-Mariana) arc system.
