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LITHOEN

Geological region

Philippines diffuse deformation zone

A zone of distributed deformation through the Philippine archipelago, where convergence is partitioned across several structures rather than taken up on one boundary.

World map with thirteen hatched purple regions — including the Alps, a large Persia–Tibet–Burma zone, the Andes, the Philippines, western North America and the Laptev Sea — over faint plate outlines.
The thirteen regions model PB2002 calls orogens, shown over faint plate outlines. In that model an orogen is a region where deformation is distributed rather than confined to a boundary, so the rigid-plate description fails there. These are NOT orogenic belts: their outlines delimit the limits of a model, not the extent of any geological province, and Bird gives them spelled-out names specifically to prevent confusion with plates. Several of them — Alps, Persia–Tibet–Burma — coincide with mountain belts, because distributed deformation and mountains have a common cause; the coincidence is not an identity.

Figure by Lithoen. Plate model PB2002 from Bird (2003), doi:10.1029/2001GC000252; GIS conversion by Hugo Ahlenius, Nordpil, ODC-By 1.0. Made with Natural Earth. Underlying data remain under their own licences. · LITHOEN-ORIGINAL · Derivative: Generated from published Lithoen spatial records by scripts/generate-maps.ts; no coordinate was edited by hand. Features spanning ±180° are split for rendering only; the stored geometry is unchanged.

Classification

region kind
diffuseDeformationZone
domain realm
asia

How this is mapped

One published representation of where Philippines diffuse deformation zone is. Each is one interpretation, by one identified source, at one scale — not the shape of the thing itself.

  • Tectonic model geometry

    Polygon · 59 positionspreferred for publication

    Geometry that exists because a model defines it — a rigid-plate outline, a zone where a model declares itself inapplicable. It is a property of the model, and changes when the model is revised. It is present-day geometry from a present-day model; a palaeogeographic reconstruction is a different thing and Lithoen does not hold one.

    The outline of the "Philippines" orogen in model PB2002 (Bird, 2003). In that model an orogen is a region where the rigid-plate description does not apply because deformation is distributed, so this outline delimits where a MODEL stops working — it is not the extent of a mountain belt and carries no claim about crustal structure, age or thickness. Digitised by by Peter Bird, September 2001.

    Boundary certainty
    DefinedThe boundary is fixed by a definition rather than found in the field — a model boundary, a stated coordinate limit, an administrative extent of a survey. It is exactly where it says it is, because it is a definition.
    Status of this geometry
    modelledThe status of the geometry, which need not match the status of what the entity’s claims assert.
    Dataset
    PB2002 plates, boundaries and orogens as GeoJSON (fraxen/tectonicplates)Plate model PB2002 from Bird (2003), doi:10.1029/2001GC000252; GIS conversion by Hugo Ahlenius, Nordpil, ODC-By 1.0.

    What was done to this geometry

    • By Lithoen — Coordinates rounded to 4 decimal places, about 11 m of longitude at the equator.
    • Before it reached Lithoen — Digitised by Peter Bird for model PB2002; the outlines delimit where the model declares itself inapplicable.
    • Before it reached Lithoen — The GIS conversion (Ahlenius, ODC-By 1.0) split segments spanning the -180/180 meridian and moved them, as its README states.

Record last updated 2026-09-07. Corrections follow the published corrections policy; superseded claims are retained, never silently edited.