Ring of Fire
Ring of Fire, long horseshoe-shaped seismically active belt of earthquake epicentres, volcanoes, and tectonic plate boundaries that fringes the Pacific basin. For much of its 40,000-km (24,900-mile) length, the belt follows chains of island arcs such as Tonga and New Hebrides, the Indonesian archipelago, the Philippines, Japan, the Kuril Islands, and the Aleutians, as well as other arc-shaped geomorphic features, such as the western coast of North America and the Andes Mountains. Volcanoes are associated with the belt throughout its length; for this reason it is called the “Ring of Fire.” A series of deep ocean troughs frame the belt on the oceanic side, and continental landmasses lie behind. Most of the world’s earthquakes, the overwhelming majority of the world’s strongest earthquakes, and approximately 75 percent of the world’s volcanoes occur within the Ring of Fire.
The Ring of Fire surrounds several tectonic plates—including the vast Pacific Plate and the smaller Philippine, Juan de Fuca, Cocos, and Nazca plates. Many of these plates are subducting under the continental plates they border. Along much of the western coast of North America, however, the Pacific Plate is sliding past the North American plate at plate intersections called transform faults.
Major volcanic events that have occurred within the Ring of Fire since 1800 included the eruptions of Mount Tambora (1815), Krakatoa (1883), Novarupta (1912), Mount Saint Helens (1980), Mount Ruiz (1985), and Mount Pinatubo (1991). The Ring of Fire has been the setting for several of the largest earthquakes in recorded history, including the Chile earthquake of 1960, the Alaska earthquake of 1964, the Chile earthquake of 2010, and the Japan earthquake of 2011 as well as the earthquake that produced the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004.