Tectonic Plates Map

Every tectonic plate and plate boundary on Earth, colored by type, with over 13,000 active fault lines (including the San Andreas Fault), the Ring of Fire and the last 30 days of earthquakes. Click anywhere to see which plate it is on. Free, no sign-up.

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Click anywhere on the map, or press What plate am I on?, to see which tectonic plate a place sits on, the nearest plate boundary and how fast it moves, and the nearest named active fault.

The Three Types of Plate Boundaries

BoundaryPlatesWhat happensExamples
ConvergentMove toward each otherSubduction zones build deep trenches, volcanic arcs and the largest earthquakes; continental collisions push up mountain ranges.Japan Trench, Andes, Himalayas
DivergentMove apartMagma rises to form new crust at mid-ocean ridges; on land the crust stretches into rift valleys.Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Iceland, East African Rift
TransformSlide past each otherCrust is neither created nor destroyed, but friction locks the plates until they slip in earthquakes.San Andreas Fault, North Anatolian Fault, Alpine Fault

San Andreas Fault and the Ring of Fire

The San Andreas Fault is the best-known fault line in the United States: a roughly 1,200 km transform boundary through California where the Pacific Plate slides northwest past the North American Plate. The GEM database splits it into named segments (Parkfield, Cholame, San Bernardino and others), each with its own slip rate. It is only one of many active faults in the US; the map also shows the Hayward, San Jacinto and Wasatch faults, the Cascadia subduction zone and the faults of Alaska.

The Ring of Fire is the chain of subduction zones that almost surrounds the Pacific Ocean. As the Pacific, Nazca, Cocos and Philippine Sea plates sink beneath their neighbours, they feed volcanoes from the Andes to Japan and generate the world's largest earthquakes, including the magnitude 9.5 Chile earthquake of 1960 and the magnitude 9.1 Tōhoku earthquake of 2011. Turn on the volcano layer to see how closely volcanoes follow the red subduction lines.

For the latest shaking, open the earthquake tracker; for eruptions, the volcano tracker.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are tectonic plates?
Earth's outer shell, the lithosphere, is broken into large rigid slabs called tectonic plates that float on the hotter, softer mantle beneath and move a few centimetres a year. There are 7 or 8 major plates (Pacific, North American, Eurasian, African, Antarctic, South American and Indo-Australian, often split into the India and Australia plates) and dozens of smaller ones. This map uses Peter Bird's PB2002 model of 52 plates.
What are the three types of plate boundaries?
At convergent boundaries (red) plates move toward each other: one dives beneath the other at a subduction zone, or two continents collide and push up mountains. At divergent boundaries (amber) plates pull apart, forming mid-ocean ridges and continental rifts. At transform boundaries (blue) plates slide past each other sideways, like the San Andreas Fault. Hover over any boundary on the map to see its type and how fast the plates move.
Where is the San Andreas Fault?
The San Andreas Fault runs about 1,200 km through California, from the Salton Sea in the south to Cape Mendocino in the north, passing near Los Angeles and San Francisco. It is a transform fault where the Pacific Plate slides northwest past the North American Plate. Press San Andreas Fault above the map to zoom in with the fault highlighted, then hover over each segment for its name and slip rate.
What is the Ring of Fire?
The Pacific Ring of Fire is a roughly 40,000 km horseshoe of subduction zones around the Pacific Ocean, running from New Zealand past Indonesia, Japan and Alaska and down the west coast of the Americas. It hosts about three quarters of the world's active volcanoes and around 90% of its earthquakes. Press Ring of Fire above the map to see its subduction zones (red) together with the last 30 days of earthquakes.
What tectonic plate am I on?
Press Use my location, or click anywhere on the map. The tool tells you which plate the point sits on, how far away the nearest plate boundary is, what kind of boundary it is and how fast the plates move there, and the nearest named active fault within 150 km. Results update instantly, and nothing you click is uploaded anywhere.
Where does the data come from?
Plate outlines and boundary types come from Peter Bird's PB2002 plate model (2003), via the open fraxen/tectonicplates dataset (ODC-BY). Fault lines come from the GEM Global Active Faults Database (Styron and Pagani, 2020; CC BY-SA 4.0), simplified for the web. Earthquakes are the live USGS feed of magnitude 4.5 and larger in the last 30 days, and volcanoes come from the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program. Fault traces are generalised: use official geological survey maps for engineering or property decisions.