Where it is and what it carries
The Burma Plate, also called the Burma Microplate, is a slim strip of crust about 515,000 km² in area. It runs from the northern tip of Sumatra and the island of Simeulue north through the Nicobar and Andaman Islands into the Andaman Sea. Its only land is small: the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India and parts of northern Sumatra and nearby islands in Indonesia.
Despite its name, almost none of Myanmar lies on this plate in PB2002. The dataset places western Myanmar on the Indian Plate and the rest on the Eurasian Plate and Sunda Plate.
What happens at its edges
The western edge is the Andaman Trench and the northern part of the Sunda Trench. Here the Indian Plate sinks beneath the Burma Plate along about 2,000 km of boundary, at an average of about 2.5 cm/yr. In places the rate reaches about 5.1 cm/yr. The Indian Plate arrives at a slant, so part of its motion is taken up by sideways sliding inside the overriding plate.
The eastern edge, about 1,780 km long, separates the plate from the Sunda Plate. It combines the Andaman Sea spreading center, continental rifts and strike-slip faults, with relative motion of about 4.3 cm/yr. That spreading opens the Andaman Sea as the Burma Plate moves north.
At its southern tip, the plate meets the Australian Plate along 162 km of subduction zone at about 5.1 cm/yr. A tiny 82 km collision boundary touches the Eurasian Plate in the north.
Earthquakes and volcanoes
The Burma Plate has had 31 earthquakes of magnitude 6.5 or larger since 1900, and 2 reached magnitude 8. The largest by far is the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake (M9.1), one of the largest ever recorded. The 1907 Sumatra earthquake (M8.2) struck near Simeulue and also caused a tsunami; islanders kept stories of it alive, and that memory helped many of them escape in 2004.
Other large events include a M7.96 in 1941 near the Andaman Islands, a M7.5 in 2009 north of the Andamans, a M7.5 near the Nicobar Islands in 2010, and M7.4 quakes near Simeulue in 2002 and 2008.
The plate has 1 volcano in the dataset, Barren Island, the only confirmed active volcano in India. It rises from the Andaman Sea east of the Andaman Islands, above the slab of the sinking Indian Plate.