The Australian and Pacific plates
New Zealand straddles two plates, with a broad boundary zone passing through and offshore from the country. Its islands cannot each be assigned neatly to one plate.
BOUNDARIES
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Plate colours identify regions, not risk.
Select two map points to examine earthquakes near a line.
Alpine Fault context
The Alpine Fault accommodates substantial sideways motion and uplift in the South Island. The Marlborough faults connect it toward the subduction system to the northeast.
Subduction around New Zealand
Pacific lithosphere descends beneath the Australian Plate at Hikurangi. South of New Zealand, Australian lithosphere descends beneath the Pacific Plate at Puysegur, reversing which plate is underneath.
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. Terrain uses the Natural Earth I shaded-relief raster, public domain. Its global scale does not resolve individual faults or local elevation.
- GNS Science: Geology and plate boundary of New Zealand
- GNS Science: New Zealand faults
- 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.