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Subject matter expert, please check: the article currently says the Okhotsk Plate was formerly considered part of the North American plate. This seems very geographically unlikely.
67.171.51.25 ( talk) 17:10, 12 March 2011 (UTC)
I think the notion of an Okhotsk plate is an interesting theory, but one that has not yet been accepted by most scientists. There are 2 decent sources in the "Bibliography" section (which need to be converted to inline cites, btw). The first postulates a theory (Apel et al 1996); it's title even ends in a question mark. The mere fact that the Apel citation title ends in a question mark is enough to disqualify it as a Wikipedia standard "verifiable source" AFAIC. An article needs at least two of those, no?
The second citation in the bibliography is more recent (2006) and appears to contain research results supporting the idea. Nevertheless, scholarly journals are meant for peer review and most resources I've seen on the subject appear to have rejected the idea.
Perhaps this article can be cleaned up to reflect its "proposed" status as far as trying to achieve scientific consensus goes. The area is not without its little controversies here and there because the boundaries of tectonic plates are not always neatly cut-and-dried. Sort of like Pluto keeps going in and out of planet-hood.
If there are not other verifiable sources that confirm a scientific consensus that this plate exists, then the article should probably be deleted. In that case, the article's contents should be bundled up as an adjunct footnote on the main North American plate article. JeffTracy ( talk) 07:05, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
The Wikipedia article on Plate Tectonics includes this map, which seems to do a pretty good job of delineating the details of plates and their RELATIVE MOTIONS with regard to Africa. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Tectonic_plates_boundaries_detailed-en.svg
Part of the problem with defining plates in northeastern Asia has been the motions were typically reported relative to North America, but now not only the Okhotsk Plate, but also potentially the Bering Plate, have been shown to be moving independently of North America (as is the Komandorsky Island block, a sliver north of the westernmost Aleutian trench. But the boundaries may in some part be diffuse.
Recent article on Bering plate/block:
General plate tectonic maps, such as the classic in the Wikipedia article, are at least a decade old, some of them still based on a 1976 paper by Hamilton. Moreover, they are almost always simplified. Surely we have more data now. The question is, when will the newer maps become common? And will Wikipedia be a leader or a follower on this? It's ok to say that the boundaries are not all that well defined, but assigning Kamchatka, the Sea of Okhotsk, the Kurils, and northern Japan to the North America plate seems just as controversial to me, or more.
Furthermore, it's noted in discussion that this is a controversy, but I haven't really seen "opposition" to existence of the Okhotsk Plate. I'd be interested if others have, and where. The USGS now shows it (though without naming it) on a website: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/plate_tectonics/plates.php
There are many professional articles showing the Okhotsk plate, and I haven't seen a professional article challenging the Okhotsk plate.
The arguments for the Okhotsk plate are multiple. First, there is seismicity along most of its boundary: K. G. Mackey, K. Fujita, H. E. Hartse, R. J. Stead, L. K. Steck, L. V. Gunbina, N. Leyshuk, S. V. Shibaev, B. M. Koz'min, V. S. Imaev, E. I. Gordeev, V. N. Chebrov, O. K. Masal'ski, N. A. Gileva, V. A. Bormatov, A. A. Voitenok, Y. N. Levin, and T. A. Fokina Seismicity map of eastern Russia, 1960-2010 Seismological Research Letters (September 2010), 81(5):761-768
Second, there is GPS evidence for its motion, such as the Apel et al. article cited in the Wikipedia entry and discussed in this Wikipedia section: Apel, E. V., R. B�rgmann, G. Steblov, N. Vasilenko, R. King, and A. Prytkov (2006), Independent active microplate tectonics of northeast Asia from GPS velocities and block modeling, Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L11303, doi:10.1029/2006GL026077. pdf available here: http://seismo.berkeley.edu/~apel/research/okhotsk/okhotsk.htm
There are also a number of Russian papers also with GPS data supporting existence of the Okhotsk plate (see Mackey et al., 2010 for some examples).
Third, the neotectonics of the boundary north of the Aleutian trench shows evidence of convergence:
Geoscriptor ( talk) 01:38, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
The following external links provided above do not exist now.
Sam Tomato ( talk) 21:46, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
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The first external link is to a small archived page that was under construction. That does not seem authoritive. The second external link to an archived page certainly questions the validity of an Okhotsk Plate; it says (among other things) there is insufficient data to determine if it truly is a plate but if it is then it cannot yet be defined. Sam Tomato ( talk) 21:33, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
Someone needs to find the area of this plate and add it to the table on the top right. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.136.252.162 ( talk) 20:18, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
On 5 March 2017, the 'disputed' template was added to the start of this article, presumably because of the 2011 Talk comments above. I think the existence of the Okhotsk plate is now accepted; for instance, a recent paper on the 2011 Tohoku earthquake ("the best-documented megathrust earthquake in the world") states it occurred in the zone where the Pacific plate is subducting beneath the Okhotsk plate: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/4/6/eaat4396 , and another paper has surveyed the Ulakhan fault between the Okhotsk plate and the North American plate, and measured the slip rate: https://www.solid-earth.net/10/561/2019/ . I think, perhaps with the addition of these references, we can remove the 'disputed' marker. Peace Makes Plenty ( talk) 10:11, 19 August 2019 (UTC)