" The Pacific Ring of Fire "

The Pacific Ring of Fire (or sometimes just the Ring of Fire) is an area where large numbers of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur in the basin of a Pacific Ocean.
In a 40,000 km horseshoe shape, it is associated with a nearly continuous series of oceanic trenches, volcanic arcs, and volcanic belts and/or plate movements. The Ring of Fire has 452 volcanoes and is home to over 75% of the world's active and dormant volcanoes. It is sometimes called the circum-Pacific belt or the circum-Pacific seismic belt. About 90% of the world's earthquakes and 80% of the world's largest earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire. The next most seismic region (5–6% of earthquakes and 17% of the world's largest earthquakes) is the Alpide belt, which extends from Java to Sumatra through the Himalayas, the Mediterranean, and out into the Atlantic.The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is the third most prominent earthquake belt.

The Ring of Fire is a direct result of plate tectonics and the movement and collisions of crustal plates.The eastern section of the ring is the result of the Nazca Plate and the Cocos Plate being subducted beneath the westward moving South American Plate.The Cocos Plate is being subducted beneath the Caribbean Plate, in Central America. A portion of the Pacific Plate along with the small Juan de Fuca Plate are being subducted beneath the North American Plate. Along the northern portion the northwestward moving Pacific plate is being subducted beneath the Aleutian Islands arc. Further west the Pacific plate is being subducted along the Kamchatka Peninsula arcs on south past Japan.

The southern portion is more complex with a number of smaller tectonic plates in collision with the Pacific plate from the Mariana Islands, the Philippines, Bougainville, Tonga, and New Zealand. Indonesia lies between the Ring of FireNew Guinea and the Alpide belt along the south and west from Sumatra, Java, Bali, Flores, and Timor. The famous and very active San Andreas Fault zone of California is a transform fault which offsets a portion of the East Pacific Rise under southwestern United States and Mexico.

The motion of the fault generates numerous small earthquakes, at multiple times a day, most of which are too small to be felt.Queen Charlotte Fault on the west coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia, Canada, has generated three large earthquakes during the 20th century: a magnitude 7 event in 1929, a magnitude 8.1 occurred in 1949 (Canada's largest recorded earthquake) and a magnitude 7.4 in 1970.



CHILE

Volcanoes of Chile are related to subduction of the Nazca Plate to the east. Villarrica, one of Chile's most active volcanoes, rises above Villarrica Lake and the town of Villarrica. It is the westernmost of three large stratovolcanoes that trend perpendicular to the Andean chain. A 6-km wide caldera formed during the late Pleistocene, >0.9 million years ago. A 2-km-wide postglacial caldera is located at the base of the presently active, dominantly basaltic-to-andesitic cone at the NW margin of the Pleistocene caldera. About 25 scoria cones dot Villarica's flanks. Plinian eruptions and pyroclastic flows have been produced during the Holocene from this dominantly basaltic volcano, but historical eruptions have consisted largely of mild-to-moderate explosive activity with occasional lava effusion. Lahars from the glacier-covered volcano have damaged towns on its flanks.

In 2008, Chile experienced two volcanic eruptions, the first one from Llaima Volcano (January 1) and Chaitén Volcano (May 1). More recently, an 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck central Chile on February 27, 2010 (2010 Chile earthquake).



Mexico


Volcanoes of Mexico are related to subduction of the Cocos and Rivera plates to the east, which has produced large explosive eruptions. Most active volcanoes in Mexico occur in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, which extends 900 kilometres (559 mi) from west to east across central-southern Mexico.




United States


In the western United States lies the Cascade Volcanic Arc. It includes nearly 20 major volcanoes, among a total of over 4,000 separate volcanic vents including numerous stratovolcanoes, shield volcanoes, lava domes, and cinder cones, along with a few isolated examples of rarer volcanic forms such as tuyas.





Canada

Although little-known to the general public, British Columbia and Yukon Territory are home to a vast region of volcanoes and volcanic activity in the Pacific Ring of Fire. Several mountains that many British Columbians look at every day are dormant volcanoes. Most of them have erupted during the Pleistocene and Holocene.




Russia

The Kamchatka Peninsula in the Russian Far East, is one of the most various and active volcanic areas in the world, with an area of 472,300 km². It lies between the Pacific Ocean to the east and the Okhotsk Sea to the west. Immediately offshore along the Pacific coast of the peninsula runs the 10,500 meter deep Kuril-Kamchatka Trench. This is where rapid subduction of the Pacific Plate fuels the intense volcanism. Almost all types of volcanic activity are present, from stratovolcanoes and shield volcanoes to Hawaiian-style fissure eruptions




Japan

Ten percent of the world's active volcanoes are found in Japan, which lies in a zone of extreme crustal instability. They are formed by subduction of the Pacific Plate and the Philippine Sea Plate. As many as 1,500 earthquakes are recorded yearly, and magnitudes of four to six on the Richter scale are not uncommon. Minor tremors occur almost daily in one part of the country or another, causing slight shaking of buildings. Major earthquakes occur infrequently; the most famous in the twentieth century were: the great Kantō earthquake of 1923, in which 130,000 people died; and the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 17 January 1995, in which 6,434 people died. Undersea earthquakes also expose the Japanese coastline to danger from tsunamis.




Philippines

The 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo is the world's second largest terrestrial eruption of the 20th century. Successful predictions of the onset of the climactic eruption led to the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from the surrounding areas, saving many lives, but as the surrounding areas were severely damaged by pyroclastic flows, ash deposits, and later, lahars caused by rainwater remobilising earlier volcanic deposits, thousands of houses were destroyed. Mayon Volcano is the Philippines' most active volcano. The volcano has steep upper slopes that average 35–40 degrees and is capped by a small summit crater. The historical eruptions of this basaltic-andesitic volcano dates back to 1616 and ranges from Strombolian to basaltic Plinian eruptions. Eruptions occur predominately from the central conduit and have also produced lava flows that travel far down the flanks. Pyroclastic flows and mudflows have commonly swept down many of the approximately 40 ravines that radiate from the summit and have often devastated populated lowland areas. Taal Volcano has had 33 recorded eruptions since 1572. A devastating eruption occurred in 1911, which claimed more than a thousand lives. The deposits of that eruption consisted of a yellowish, fairly decomposed (non-juvenile) tephra with a high sulfur content. The most recent period of activity lasted from 1965 to 1977, and was characterized by the interaction of magma with the lake water, which produced violent phreatic explosions. Although the volcano has been dormant since 1977, it has shown signs of unrest since 1991, with strong seismic activity and ground fracturing events, as well as the formation of small mud geysers on parts of the island. Kanlaon is the most active volcano in central Philippines and has erupted 25 times since 1866. Eruptions are typically phreatic explosions of small-to-moderate size that produce minor ashfalls near the volcano. On August 10, 1996, Kanlaon erupted without warning, killing British student Julian Green and Filipinos Noel Tragico and Neil Perez, who were among 24 mountainclimbers who were trapped near the summit.



Indonesia

The volcanoes in Indonesia are among the most active of the Pacific Ring of Fire. They are formed due to subduction zones between the Eurasian Plate and the Indo-Australian Plate. Some of the volcanoes are notable for their eruptions, for instance, Krakatau for its global effects in 1883, Lake Toba for its supervolcanic eruption estimated to have occurred 74,000 BP which was responsible for six years of volcanic winter, and Mount Tambora for the most violent eruption in recorded history in 1815. The eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 caused wide spread harvest failures in Northern Europe, the Northeastern United States, and eastern Canada in 1816, which was known as the Year Without a Summer.


New Zealand

New Zealand contains the world's strongest concentration of youthful rhyolitic volcanoes, and voluminous sheets blanket much of North Island.
The earliest historically-dated eruption was at Whakaari/White Island in 1826. Much of the region north of New Zealand's North Island is made up of seamounts and small islands, including 16 submarine volcanoes. In the last 1.6 million years, most of New Zealand's volcanism is from the Taupo Volcanic Zone.


Antarctica

The southernmost end of the Pacific Ring of Fire is the continent Antarctica, which includes many large volcanoes. The makeup and structure of the volcanoes in Antarctica change largely from the other places around the ring. In contrast, the Antarctic Plate is almost completely surrounded by extensional zones, with several mid-ocean ridges which encircle it, and there is only a small subduction zone at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, reaching eastward to the remote South Sandwich Islands. The most well known volcano in Antarctica is Mount Erebus, which is also the world's southernmost active volcano