Application of Improved Stereographic Projection Method to Quantify Lithospheric Plate Motion Trajectory

Abstract

The traditional method of studying plate motion still cannot be used to obtain plate motion trajectory quantitatively. In this paper, we proposed a new method to quantitative determine plate motion trajectory. Depending on the paleomagnetic data of lithosphere plate and the stereographic projection principle. We selected the Wulff net as the basic projection net, improved and transformed the traditional stereographic projection methods. Projecting the paleomagnetic data (magnetic declination, palaeolatitude and geomagnetic pole coordinate) of the lithosphere plate into the improved stereographic projection net, we can get the analysis results of lithosphere plate stereographic projection. In our study, we took the Indian plate as an example, projected the paleomagnetic data (from Cretaceous) into the stereographic projection net, got the analysis results of motion trajectory of the Indian plate from Cretaceous. This method can be applied to quantify lithospheric plate motion trajectory.