Interactive Map of the World Tectonic Plates

To view the GPS velocities of a specific plate, click within the boundaries of a specific plate. The three largest plates have been split into multiple sections. North America has been sectioned off into four sections, the northernmost regions, Canada, Greenland and Iceland, the United States, and Central America. The Pacific Ocean has been split into northern and southern regions, whereas Antarctica is split east and west. In case of browser incompatibility on older systems, hypertexts links to each plate or region are listed below:

AMUR	ARABIA	AUSTRALIA	AZORES	BERING
CANADA GREENLAND ICELAND	CAPRICORN	CAROLINE	CENTRAL AMERICA	EAST ANTARCTIC
EURASIA	INDIA	JUAN DE FUCA	LWANDLE	MACQUARIE
NAZCA	NORTH AMERICA	NORTH PACIFIC	NUBIA	OKHOTSK
PHILIPPINE SEA	SANDWICH	SCOTIA	SOMALIA	SOUTH AMERICA
SOUTH PACIFIC	SUNDALAND	SUR	UNITED STATES	WEST ANTARCTIC
YANGTZE

This site is designed to give an interactive and visual representation of the data gathered and interpreted at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Geoscience department.

The initial tab contains a map of the world that allows users to easily choose the tectonic plate or geographic region that they wish to see GPS data for.

If this map is inoperable for any reason, a list of hypertext links of each plate or region has been provided that has the same functionality of the interactive map, bringing the user to the corresponding region's individual page.

When the individual region's page has been loaded, a map of that region is plotted that contains the location and relative velocities of all of the GPS receivers monitored at UW. The red arrows correspond to the direction and magnitude of that site's calculated movement. There is a scale at the bottom of the map to provide reference speed, as different states can have avery different maximum and everage movement vectors.

Below each region's map is a table containing hypertext links to the timeseries position plots of each GPS station.

Map of the World

Map of the World

Here is the generated map of Wisconsin:

We see that there is a higher concentration of GPS receivers along the eastern side of Wisconsin, and these are trending south-southwest at an approximate rate of ~2mm/year. When this data is compiled visually, it is easier to understand how plate tectonics are working on a large scale, even in geologically quieter regions.

Here is the timeseries for a GPS station in Wisconsin (DERE)

This image shows the position of the GPS site on a day to day basis, where the red dots are the daily positions with random noise filtered out, and blue circles are 20-day average locations to show a more uniform trend. There are linear fit lines placed on each graph which are a calculation of the general trend over the entire data collecting period.

Map of the World

Map of the United States

GPS receivers and data are monitored at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Geoscience department by Professor Charles DeMets.

The software used for generating the maps is the Generic Mapping Tool, which is released under the GNU General Public License

Website design and interpretation by Kyle Fredericks, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Map of the World

Map of the United States