New Maps of Global Geological Provinces and Tectonic Plates

Accurate spatial models of tectonic plates and geological terranes are important for analyzing interpreting a wide variety geoscientific data developing compositional physical the lithosphere. We present global compilation active plate boundaries provinces in shapefile format with interpretive attributes (e.g., crust type, province last orogeny). The initial constructed from combination published regional that we refine using constraints including, but not limited to, relative GPS motions, earthquakes, mapped faults, potential field characteristics, geochronology. These new model show improved correlation to observed earthquake volcano occurrences within deformation zones microplates, compared existing models, capturing 73 80% these criteria, respectively. Deformation microplates only account 16% Earth's surface area. estimate 57.5% is covered by oceanic crust, which slight increase most recent seafloor age model. orogenies agrees well peaks globally summed geochronology data. There room improvement future editions our geologic where basins, ice, or lack fidelity obscure bedrock geology, particularly eastern Central Asian Orogenic Belt, much Africa, East Antarctica, Australia. Additionally, some types—orogens, shields, cratons homogenized scheme—can likely be partitioned into smaller more precise geodynamic attributes. Despite shortcomings, digital maps presented here form self-consistent standard adding metadata databases. database available on GitHub geoscience community can provide updates improve their contemporaneity as knowledge acquired. files also released formats suitable use Generic Mapping Tools GoogleEarth.