Caption: This figure shows the boundaries of the tectonic plates that cover the Earth’s surface. A new model from University of Wisconsin-Madison geophysicist Chuck DeMets and collaborators at Rice University and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory describes the movement of nearly all Earth’s tectonic plates with an unprecedented degree of precision. The two-letter codes are plate name abbreviations; those in black are included in the model.
Photo: courtesy Chuck DeMets
Date: March 2010
High-resolution JPEG