Banda Sea Plate

Map of the Banda Sea Plate (as "Mer de Banda") and its neigbouring plates (in French)

The Banda Sea Plate is a small tectonic plate underlying the Banda Sea in southeast Asia. This plate also carries a portion of the island of Sulawesi, the entire island of Seram, and the Banda Islands. Clockwise from the east it is bounded by the Bird's Head Plate of western New Guinea, Australian Plate, Timor Plate, Sunda Plate, and the Molucca Sea Plate. The western border is a convergent boundary largely responsible for the mountains in western Sulawesi, subduction zones also exist on the eastern border near Seram and the southern border with the Timor Plate. It is a very seismically active area home to many volcanoes and the site of many large earthquakes, the largest of which was the 1938 Banda Sea earthquake which measured around 8.5 on the Richter scale.

References

50. Bird, P. (2003) An updated digital model of plate boundaries, Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems, 4(3), 1027, doi:10.1029/2001GC000252. [1]