The Indian Plate outline
The Indian Plate contains the Indian subcontinent and neighbouring oceanic lithosphere. Its northern boundary lies within a much broader zone of mountain building and deformation.
BOUNDARIES
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Plate colours identify regions, not risk.
Collision with Eurasia
India moves toward and beneath Eurasia along the Himalayan collision belt. The collision shortens and thickens the crust, with deformation extending into the Tibetan Plateau.
India and Australia in different models
Some maps use one Indo-Australian Plate; PB2002 separates India and Australia. The transition is a broad deformation zone, so the chosen model affects how its outline is drawn.
Sources and map method
Plate outlines use Peter Bird's PB2002 model, distributed by Nordpil under the Open Data Commons Attribution licence. Coastlines and country outlines are Natural Earth public-domain data. Boundary detail is limited by the source model.
- USGS: Himalaya and vicinity, version 1.1 (2014)
- Bird (2003): PB2002 plate boundary model
- USGS: Sumatra and vicinity tectonic map
- Map dataset sources and licences
- PB2002 geometry and licence
- Natural Earth terms
Country lookup compares simplified land outlines with the plate model. Boundaries and historical coastlines are modelled features. This atlas explains geography; it does not predict earthquakes or provide site-specific hazard estimates.