To the north of Puerto Rico, the North American plate "subducts" beneath the Caribbean plate along the Puerto Rico trench.

Earthquakes on the North American Plate. North American Plate - 75,900,000 sq km The North American Plate is the world’s second-largest tectonic plate. In California, much of the strain generated by the grinding of the Pacific Plate against North America is taken up in earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault and related structures. The North American Plate has a transform boundary with the Pacific Plate, dividing California at the San Andreas Fault. The San Andreas Fault is responsible for most of the movement in western California, causing a sliver of the state to slide past the rest of the continent. The Pacific Plate slides north-northwestward past the North American Plate along the San Andreas Transform Plate Boundary. It consists of both continental crust and oceanic crust. The North American Plate is a tectonic plate covering most of North America, Greenland, Cuba, the Bahamas, extreme northeastern Asia, and parts of Iceland and the Azores.With an area of 76 million km 2 (29 million sq mi), it is the Earth's second largest tectonic plate, behind the Pacific Plate (which borders the plate to the west). These include great earthquakes (yellow stars) such as the magnitude 9.2 Good Friday earthquake in Prince William sound. The San Andreas Fault is responsible for most of the movement in western California, causing a sliver of the state to slide past the rest of the continent. Tectonic movement of the North American Plate has thinned Earth’s crust in the area, forming a hot spot (a place where a dome of magma, or molten rock, comes close to the surface).

The plate’s continental crust is made up of most of North America and Iceland.

Earthquakes and tsunamis in Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and adjacent islands are mostly caused by the convergence of the North American tectonic plate with the Caribbean tectonic plate on which the islands are located. Along the Alaskan panhandle, there was a collection of 2- and 3-magnitude earthquakes.

Read More. The Alaska/Aleutian Subduction Zone Load Next Article. Along the western border of the North American plate in a dextral transform fault lies the Pacific plate (Nicholson, 1994). The temblor was the result of the Pacific Plate diving beneath the North American Plate at the Alaska-Aleutian megathrust, which has been the location of many megathrust earthquakes. But, the shearing action dosn't end there. About 2.1 million years ago a subsurface magma dome that had been building up in the…. Tectonics in Puerto Rico are dominated by the convergence between the North America and Caribbean tectonic plates.

Below: Many earthquakes occur along this boundary, both on the contact between the plates and in the overriding North American plate. Earth's largest crustal plate The Pacific Plate is the largest crustal plate on our planet.

The rate at which these plates come together is …

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Between the North American Plate and the Pacific Plate off the south-west coast of Haida Gwaii, there was a large cluster of earthquakes with magnitudes of 2. The Pacific Plate slides north-northwestward past the North American Plate along the San Andreas Transform Plate Boundary. Real-time Earthquakes Plate Boundary Ruptures Along Western North America In addition to the 1906 rupture of the San Andreas fault in northern California, the San Andreas fault in south-central California also experienced a similar size earthquake in 1857, rupturing the San Andreas fault from Parkfield to just northwest of San Bernardino.