Assign Plates

Determining Platecodes for a large number of locations given by Longitude-Latitude can be a real pain. In this form, locations can be entered and a 1st order estimation will be calculated on the plate, a given location belongs to.

To do this just enter (or copy/paste) your lon/lat-data into the data-area below. Make sure you have exactly one lon/lat-pair per line. Comments can be entered by using a "#"-character in the beginning of a line. The output will be the same list of locations, with platecodes appended, ready to be pasted into the advanced reconstruction form.

This application checks the outlines of the worlds 14 major plates and calculates, whether a location is within or outside one of these plates. Because only 14 plates are calculated, this is only a 1st order guess. To refine your data, you have to go into detail and check each point versus the plotted plate-maps in the advanced mapping manual. The currently recognized plates are:

Africa Antarctica Arabia Australia

Caribbean Cocos Plate Easter Microplate Eurasia

India Juan de Fuca Plate North America

Nazca Plate Pacific Plate South America

The system identifies the continental parts, together with their oceanic crust attachments.

Plate outlines were used from: