Schematic tectonic reconstruction of the Philippine SZI event (modified from Hall, 1996 and Wu et al., 2016). The collision of the Palawan continental block with the trench of the east-dipping subduction of the Eurasia plate below the Philippine Sea Plate is suggested to have caused a flip in subduction polarity, initiating the new Philippine subduction zone. Shown are the new subduction zone (pink line) and other active (solid purple lines) and inactive (dashed purple lines) subduction zones.
The present-day Philippine subduction zone, with the Philippine Sea plate subducting below the Eurasian plate, is thought to have started at about 9 Ma (e.g., Wu et al., 2016), after the collision of the Palawan continental block with the Philippine Mobile Belt (PMB) that occurred around 20–11 Ma (Marchadier and Rangin, 1990; Yumul Jr. et al., 2003).
The Palawan block belongs to the Eurasian plate and drifted towards the southeast until it collided with the Philippine archipelago at the trench of the former, eastward subduction zone (Marchadier and Rangin, 1990). This collision likely induced a flip in subduction polarity, which initiated the westward Philippine subduction zone (Barrier et al., 1991) on the other side of the already existing volcanic arc.
For more details on the geologic record, corresponding plate reconstruction, and seismic tomography, see the SZI Database.
- Creators: Fabio Crameri, Valentina Magni, Matthew Domeier, Ágnes Király, Grace Shephard
- This version: 17.06.2025
- License: Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Specific citation: These graphics from Crameri et al. (2020) are available via the open-access s-ink.org repository.
- Related reference: Crameri, F., V. Magni, M. Domeier, G.E. Shephard, K. Chotalia, G. Cooper, C. Eakin, A.G. Grima, D. Gürer, A. Király, E. Mulyukova, K. Peters, B. Robert, and M. Thielmann (2020), A transdisciplinary and community-driven database to unravel subduction zone initiation, Nature Communications, 11, 3750. doi:10.1038/s41467-020-17522-9
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