Talk:Okhotsk microplate

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Subject matter expert, please check: the article currently says the Okhotsk Plate was formerly considered part of the North American plate. This seems very geographically unlikely.

67.171.51.25 (talk) 17:10, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

It might seem "geographically unlikely", but it's true. Believe it or not, Tokyo lies on the North American plate! JeffTracy (talk) 07:05, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Not according to all of the sources in this article.174.73.5.74 (talk) 19:27, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

Is the Okhotsk plate really distinct from the NA plate?

I think the notion of an Okhotsk plate is an interesting theory, but one that has not yet been accepted by most scientists. There are 2 decent sources in the "Bibliography" section (which need to be converted to inline cites, btw). The first postulates a theory (Apel et al 1996); it's title even ends in a question mark. The mere fact that the Apel citation title ends in a question mark is enough to disqualify it as a Wikipedia standard "verifiable source" AFAIC. An article needs at least two of those, no?

The second citation in the bibliography is more recent (2006) and appears to contain research results supporting the idea. Nevertheless, scholarly journals are meant for peer review and most resources I've seen on the subject appear to have rejected the idea.

Perhaps this article can be cleaned up to reflect its "proposed" status as far as trying to achieve scientific consensus goes. The area is not without its little controversies here and there because the boundaries of tectonic plates are not always neatly cut-and-dried. Sort of like Pluto keeps going in and out of planet-hood.

If there are not other verifiable sources that confirm a scientific consensus that this plate exists, then the article should probably be deleted. In that case, the article's contents should be bundled up as an adjunct footnote on the main North American plate article. JeffTracy (talk) 07:05, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

There are many sources that support the recognition of the Okhotsk Plate as a separate entity, although not all are convinced, here's an example Figure 4. Mikenorton (talk) 06:33, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't doubt that there are those who consider it a separate entity. That view may even ultimately prevail. In its current form though, the article is in need of a lot of help. The main wikipedia article on Plate tectonics is huge with a lot of sources and citations. It doesn't even list the Okhotsk plate in its list of minor plates. The theory of the Okhotsk plate as a separate entity has a long way to go AFAIC. And if I'm wrong (always a possibility) then someone needs to get in here and add a whole bunch of proper inline citations to back it up, then poke at the other plate tectonics articles on Wikipedia so that the articles don't contradict each other. JeffTracy (talk) 07:05, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't disagree with the need for considerable improvement to this article, just don't think that we should be discussing deletion. I would have a go at it myself, but I'm off for a break later today and I don't have the time. Also note that it is listed at List of tectonic plates and that the list in the Plate tectonics article adds the qualifier "There are dozens of smaller plates, the seven largest of which are:", so I don't see the inconsistency as it doesn't set out to name all the minor plates. Mikenorton (talk) 08:29, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

The last frontier of plate tectonics

The Wikipedia article on Plate Tectonics includes this map, which seems to do a pretty good job of delineating the details of plates and their RELATIVE MOTIONS with regard to Africa. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Tectonic_plates_boundaries_detailed-en.svg

Part of the problem with defining plates in northeastern Asia has been the motions were typically reported relative to North America, but now not only the Okhotsk Plate, but also potentially the Bering Plate, have been shown to be moving independently of North America (as is the Komandorsky Island block, a sliver north of the westernmost Aleutian trench. But the boundaries may in some part be diffuse.

Recent article on Bering plate/block:

• Cross, R. S., and J. T. Freymueller (2008), Evidence for and implications of a Bering plate based on geodetic measurements from the Aleutians and western Alaska, J. Geophys. Res., 113, B07405, doi:10.1029/2007JB005136.
• Article on Komandorsky Island block: McElfresh, S. B.Z., Harbert, W., Ku, C.-Y., Lin, J.-S., 2002. Stress modeling of tectonic blocks at Cape Kamchatka, Russia using principal stress proxies from high-resolution SAR: new evidence for the Komandorskiy Block. Tectonophysics 354, 239-256.

General plate tectonic maps, such as the classic in the Wikipedia article, are at least a decade old, some of them still based on a 1976 paper by Hamilton. Moreover, they are almost always simplified. Surely we have more data now. The question is, when will the newer maps become common? And will Wikipedia be a leader or a follower on this? It's ok to say that the boundaries are not all that well defined, but assigning Kamchatka, the Sea of Okhotsk, the Kurils, and northern Japan to the North America plate seems just as controversial to me, or more.

Furthermore, it's noted in discussion that this is a controversy, but I haven't really seen "opposition" to existence of the Okhotsk Plate. I'd be interested if others have, and where. The USGS now shows it (though without naming it) on a website: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/plate_tectonics/plates.php

There are many professional articles showing the Okhotsk plate, and I haven't seen a professional article challenging the Okhotsk plate.

The arguments for the Okhotsk plate are multiple. First, there is seismicity along most of its boundary: K. G. Mackey, K. Fujita, H. E. Hartse, R. J. Stead, L. K. Steck, L. V. Gunbina, N. Leyshuk, S. V. Shibaev, B. M. Koz'min, V. S. Imaev, E. I. Gordeev, V. N. Chebrov, O. K. Masal'ski, N. A. Gileva, V. A. Bormatov, A. A. Voitenok, Y. N. Levin, and T. A. Fokina Seismicity map of eastern Russia, 1960-2010 Seismological Research Letters (September 2010), 81(5):761-768

Second, there is GPS evidence for its motion, such as the Apel et al. article cited in the Wikipedia entry and discussed in this Wikipedia section: Apel, E. V., R. B�rgmann, G. Steblov, N. Vasilenko, R. King, and A. Prytkov (2006), Independent active microplate tectonics of northeast Asia from GPS velocities and block modeling, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L11303, doi:10.1029/2006GL026077. pdf available here: http://seismo.berkeley.edu/~apel/research/okhotsk/okhotsk.htm

There are also a number of Russian papers also with GPS data supporting existence of the Okhotsk plate (see Mackey et al., 2010 for some examples).

Third, the neotectonics of the boundary north of the Aleutian trench shows evidence of convergence:

• Kevin Pedoja, Joanne Bourgeois, Tatiana Pinegina, and Bretwood Higman; Does Kamchatka belong to North America? An extruding Okhotsk Block suggested by coastal neotectonics of the Ozernoi Peninsula, Kamchatka, Russia: Geology (Boulder) (May 2006), 34(5):353-356
• Joanne Bourgeois, Tatiana K. Pinegina, Vera Ponomareva, and Natalia Zaretskaia; Holocene tsunamis in the southwestern Bering Sea, Russian Far East, and their tectonic implications Geological Society of America Bulletin (April 2006), 118(3-4):449-463

Geoscriptor (talk) 01:38, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Formatted "refs" above for readability. As to "And will Wikipedia be a leader or a follower on this?" - wiki is by definition a "follower". Vsmith (talk) 02:05, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

The following external links provided above do not exist now.

• https://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/plate_tectonics/plates.php
• http://seismo.berkeley.edu/~apel/research/okhotsk/okhotsk.htm

Sam Tomato (talk) 21:46, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)

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The first external link is to a small archived page that was under construction. That does not seem authoritive. The second external link to an archived page certainly questions the validity of an Okhotsk Plate; it says (among other things) there is insufficient data to determine if it truly is a plate but if it is then it cannot yet be defined. Sam Tomato (talk) 21:33, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Area of plate

Someone needs to find the area of this plate and add it to the table on the top right. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.136.252.162 (talk) 20:18, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

I could do this if someone could point me to a reliable source where I could find GIS shapefiles of microplates. Raddick (talk) 13:07, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Update: w00t, found it: https://github.com/fraxen/tectonicplates . Those shapefiles are based on this paper: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2001GC000252 . Raddick (talk) 13:12, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Removal of 'Disputed' template

On 5 March 2017, the 'disputed' template was added to the start of this article, presumably because of the 2011 Talk comments above. I think the existence of the Okhotsk plate is now accepted; for instance, a recent paper on the 2011 Tohoku earthquake ("the best-documented megathrust earthquake in the world") states it occurred in the zone where the Pacific plate is subducting beneath the Okhotsk plate: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/6/eaat4396 , and another paper has surveyed the Ulakhan fault between the Okhotsk plate and the North American plate, and measured the slip rate: https://www.solid-earth.net/10/561/2019/ . I think, perhaps with the addition of these references, we can remove the 'disputed' marker. Peace Makes Plenty (talk) 10:11, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

I added the 2 references above, and removed the template; no one has objected so far. Peace Makes Plenty (talk) 14:27, 1 September 2019 (UTC)