World Faults and Plates
Every mapped active fault and plate boundary on Earth, with its type, rate and name in Arabic and English.
An atlas of 9 600 active faults and of the boundaries of 56 tectonic plates. Each fault opens with its type of movement, dip and dip direction, rake, slip rate, seismogenic depth, length and trend; each plate boundary with its type (subduction, collision, rift, spreading ridge, transform) and its relative velocity. Tap any point for the plate beneath it and its velocity, draw an area for counts, lengths and a rose diagram with the Rayleigh test, and download a framed map, GeoJSON, KML or CSV.
Overview
Faults are coloured by their type of movement — reverse and thrust, normal, right- and left-lateral strike-slip, subduction megathrusts, spreading ridges and active fold axes — or by slip rate. Named faults can be searched in Arabic or English; the major fault systems carry an Arabic name, and every fault shows its type in Arabic. Many faults, especially in the Middle East, are unnamed in the source catalogue and are listed by type.
Plate velocities come from the published angular velocities (Euler poles) of 56 plates in the no-net-rotation frame; any plate can be held fixed to read relative motion, for example Arabia against Eurasia across the Zagros. The atlas shows active faults, those that moved in the Quaternary; older, inactive faults of geological maps are not part of it.
What you enter · What you get
What you enter
- Layers, colouring and type filters
- Fault name to search
- A point on the map and a reference plate
- An area to analyse
What you get
- Fault and plate-boundary cards in Arabic and English
- Plate and velocity at any point, faults within 50 km
- Counts, lengths, density and mean slip rate in an area
- Rose diagram with mean direction and Rayleigh test
- Framed map sheet, GeoJSON, KML, CSV
How it works in the field
Method and equations
Plate velocity
Velocity of a point on a rigid plate rotating about its Euler pole; relative motion is the difference of two plates at the same point.
Directions
Fault trends are axial data: angles are doubled for the mean direction and the mean resultant length; the rose diagram is weighted by length, and the Rayleigh test uses the trend of each fault.
Plate boundaries
Boundary steps classed as subduction zone, oceanic or continental convergent boundary, spreading ridge, continental rift and oceanic or continental transform, with the relative velocity resolved into opening or closing and strike-slip components.
Accuracy and error limits
- Fault traces are compiled from maps at scales of about 1:250 000 to 1:1 000 000, so positions are typically ±1–5 km and small faults are absent; slip rates carry the ranges of their sources (often ±50 %).
- Plate boundaries are single lines; in wide collision belts such as the Zagros the real boundary is a deforming zone up to hundreds of kilometres. Plate velocities from rigid Euler poles are accurate to about ±1–2 mm/yr.
- To reduce the error: check fault positions on 1:100 000 geological maps and imagery, map them in the field, and use GPS velocity studies for local deformation.
Who uses it
Standards and references
- Styron, R. & Pagani, M. (2020). The GEM Global Active Faults Database. Earthquake Spectra, 36(1_suppl), 160–180. Data: github.com/GEMScienceTools/gem-global-active-faults (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Bird, P. (2003). An updated digital model of plate boundaries. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 4(3), 1027. Digital files: github.com/fraxen/tectonicplates (ODC-BY).
- Argus, D.F., Gordon, R.G. & DeMets, C. (2011). Geologically current motion of 56 plates relative to the no-net-rotation reference frame. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 12, Q11001.
- DeMets, C., Gordon, R.G. & Argus, D.F. (2010). Geologically current plate motions. Geophysical Journal International, 181, 1–80.
- Mardia, K.V. & Jupp, P.E. (2000). Directional Statistics. Wiley, Chichester.
- Zar, J.H. (2010). Biostatistical Analysis, 5th ed. Pearson (Rayleigh test approximation).
- Satellite imagery for map sheets: Esri World Imagery.
At a glance
- Category
- Field geology
- Runs on
- Phone, tablet and desktop browser
- Export
- Map sheet PNG, rose diagram PNG, GeoJSON, KML, CSV, PDF report
- Access
- Subscribers
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