On November 15, 2014, the 7.1 magnitude earthquake occurred northwest of Kota Ternate, Indonesia, within the shallow oceanic crust of the Sunda plate, in the complex plate boundary region of eastern Indonesia, some 300 km to the west of the major plate boundary structure between the Sunda and Pacific plates. Faulting mechanisms for the event indicates it activated a reverse faulting structure, dipping either steeply towards the northwest, or more gently towards the southeast, in line with the general trend of earthquakes in the region. Tectonics in eastern Indonesia is extremely complex , and it's dominated by the mostly convergent interactions of the Pacific, Australia, the Philippines Sea and Sunda Plates, with some authors labeling the most proximate edge of the Pacific Plate here as a separate tectonic block called the Caroline Plate.
The edges of the Sunda and Australia plates are also often subdivided into smaller tectonic blocks, including the Molucca Sea and Birds Head microplates immediately to the south and east of the November 2014 earthquake, respectively. In this context, the November 2014 event is most closely aligns with the boundary between the broader Sunda Plate and the Birds Head microplate.
Comment list ( 0 )
