More than half of all the world’s volcanoes (over 450) are found in the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’. This area forms a circle stretching down the eastern side of the Pacific Ocean, from Alaska in the north, through the Rocky Mountains of Canada and the USA, to the Andes mountains of South America. It loops back around the western side of the Pacific, up through New Zealand, Indonesia and Japan.
Unsurprisingly the Pacific ‘Ring of Fire’ also experiences lots of earthquakes.
The image above, which plots earthquakes of magnitudes 4.0 or greater from 1898 onwards, shows just how active our planet is. The map’s data is valid up until 2003, but the 105-year period it covers includes 203,186 earthquakes. Learn more here.
Tags: Earth Science
