PACIFIC RING OF FIRE
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Context
- The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano in Tonga, which erupted recently, lies along the Pacific ‘Ring of fire’.
Pacific Ring of Fire
Location
- It is a region around much of the rim of the Pacific Ocean where many volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur.
- The Ring of Fire is a horseshoe-shaped belt about 40,000 km (25,000 mi) long and up to about 500 km (310 mi) wide.
Areas included
- The Ring of Fire includes the Pacific coasts of South America, North America and Kamchatka, and some islands in the western Pacific Ocean.
Formation
- The Ring of Fire is a direct result of plate tectonics: specifically the movement, collision and destruction of lithospheric plates under and around the Pacific Ocean.
- The collisions have created a nearly continuous series of subduction zones, where volcanoes are created and earthquakes occur.
- Consumption of oceanic lithosphere at these convergent plate boundaries has formed oceanic trenches, volcanic arcs, back-arc basins and volcanic belts.
- The Ring of Fire is not a single geological structure.
Volcanoes in it
- The Ring of Fire contains approximately 850–1,000 volcanoes that have been active during the last 11,700 years (about two-thirds of the world's total).
- The four largest volcanic eruptions on Earth in the last 11,700 years occurred at volcanoes in the Ring of Fire.
- More than 350 of the Ring of Fire's volcanoes have been active in historical times