World tectonic plates and boundaries



This is a conversion of the dataset originally published in the paper _An updated digital model of plate boundaries_ by Peter Bird (Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems, 4(3), 1027, [doi:10.1029/2001GC000252].


To bring this dataset into the modern age, the original data has been parsed, cleaned and verified using ArcGIS 10.2 and converted to shape files. 
The dataset presents tectonic plates and their boundaries, and in addition orogens and information about the boundaries.
 The data is useful for geological applications, analysis and education, and should be easy to use in any modern GIS software application.


For information on the fields and values, please refer to the original documentation and the scientific article. 


To get access to the full database, [download the zip-archive of all the data (some 5 MB)](https://github.com/fraxen/tectonicplates/archive/master.zip)

The data was downloaded from [http://peterbird.name/oldFTP/PB2002/](http://peterbird.name/oldFTP/PB2002/) in June 2014.



All the original data were retrieved from http://peterbird.name/oldFTP/PB2002/ in June 2014 and parsed using Python and Global Mapper 11. Further data manipulation was performed in ArcGIS 10.2.
 The main edits regarded segments spanning the -180/180 boundary, which had to be manually split and moved.


This work was performed by Hugo Ahlenius, a consultant specializing in GIS and cartography: http://nordpil.com.