New Hebrides Plate

The New Hebrides Plate, sometimes called the Neo-Hebridean Plate, is a minor tectonic plate (just larger than a microplate) located in the Pacific Ocean.[1][2] While most of it is submerged as the sea bottom of the North Fiji Basin, the island country of Vanuatu, with multiple arc volcanoes, is on the western edge of the plate. It is bounded on the south-west by the Australian Plate, which is subducting below it at the New Hebrides Trench. The Vanuatu subduction zone is seismically active, producing many earthquakes of magnitude 7 or higher.[3] To its north is the Pacific Plate, north-east the Balmoral Reef Plate and to its east the Conway Reef Plate.

Map of the New Hebrides Plate ("Nouvelles Hébrides") and its neighboring plates (in French)

At its south, convergence is being accommodated by rifting in the western stretch of the New Hebrides Trench, and transform faulting in the Hunter Ridge north of this stretch of the trench. The transform faulting is more established in the Hunter Fracture Zone which continues as the southern border of the Conway Reef Plate towards Fiji.[4]

The region is complex and may well have several other microplates or blocks.[5].

References
  1. Bird 2003, 5.12. New Hebrides (NH), Conway Reef (CR), Balmoral Reef (BR), and Futuna (FT) Plates(?) in the New Hebrides-Fiji Orogen.
  2. Calmant et al. 2003.
  3. Roger et al. 2023, Section:2 Seismotectonic context.
  4. Durance et al. 2012, p. 915.
  5. Szitkar et al. 2022, 2. Regional geological context.

Citations


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