Extent beneath land and sea
The plate includes much of North America, Greenland and adjacent ocean floor. Its eastern edge is offshore at spreading ridges, rather than along the Atlantic coast.
BOUNDARIES
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Plate colours identify regions, not risk.
Western and eastern boundaries
The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a divergent eastern boundary. Western North America includes transform motion in California and subduction at Cascadia and Alaska, with regional complexity between them.
Which regions lie on this plate
Political North America and the North American Plate are different areas. Parts of western California sit on the Pacific side of the main boundary, while Greenland lies on the North American Plate.
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: This Dynamic Planet
- California Geological Survey: Faulting in California (2018)
- USGS: Volcanoes and subduction in the Pacific Northwest
- 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.