"is the highest point, with an elevation of above sea level. The group consists of 18 main islands, 3 smaller islands, and 107 rocks and islets. The islands are located at the Galapagos Triple Junction. The archipelago is located on the Nazca Plate (a tectonic plate), which is moving east/southeast, diving under the South American Plate at a rate of about per year. It is also atop the Galápagos hotspot, a place where the Earth's crust is being melted from below by a mantle plume, creating volcanoes. The first islands formed here at least 8 million and possibly up to"
"Galápagos hotspot The Galápagos hotspot is a volcanic hotspot in the East Pacific Ocean responsible for the creation of the Galapagos Islands as well as three major aseismic ridge systems, Carnegie, Cocos and Malpelo which are on two tectonic plates. The hotspot is located near the Equator on the Nazca Plate not far from the divergent plate boundary with the Cocos Plate. The tectonic setting of the hotspot is complicated by the Galapagos Triple Junction of the Nazca and Cocos plates with the Pacific Plate. The movement of the plates over the hotspot is determined not solely by the spreading"
"Galapagos Rise The Galapagos Rise is a divergent boundary located between the South American coast and the triple junction of the Nazca Plate, the Cocos Plate, and the Pacific Plate. The volcanically active Galapagos Islands exist on the Galápagos hotspot above the Galapagos Rise. The Galapagos Microplate is a small separate plate on the rise just to the southeast of the triple junction. The Cocos Ridge trends northeasterly from the Galapagos to the coast of Costa Rica and Panama. The Carnegie Ridge trends almost due east to the Ecuadorian coast. The Galapagos Rise is a currently active ridge. Fernandina Volcano"
"volcano has a distinct period of activity as the hotspot moves under that portion of the Pacific plate before becoming dormant and then extinct and eroding under the ocean. This does not appear to be the case in the Galapagos, instead there is evidence of concurrent volcanism over a wide area. Nearly all Galapagos Islands show volcanism in the recent geological past, not just at the current location of the hotspot at Fernandina. The list below gives the last eruption dates for the Galapagos volcanoes, ordered from West to East. The movement of the Nazca and Cocos plates have been"
"on Fernandina Island, the most westerly island of the chain erupted on May 12, 2005 ejecting a column of ash that rose to a height of seven km from a fissure on the west side of the volcano. Volcanic ash fell on neighboring Isabela Island. Alcedo Volcano on Isabela Island last erupted in the 1950s. Galapagos Rise The Galapagos Rise is a divergent boundary located between the South American coast and the triple junction of the Nazca Plate, the Cocos Plate, and the Pacific Plate. The volcanically active Galapagos Islands exist on the Galápagos hotspot above the Galapagos Rise. The"
"the Galapagos Islands. La Cumbre is an active shield volcano on Fernandina Island in the Galapagos that has been erupting since April 11, 2009. The Galápagos islands are geologically young for such a big chain, and the pattern of their rift zones follows one of two trends, one north-northwest, and one east–west. The composition of the lavas of the Galápagos shields are strikingly similar to those of the Hawaiian volcanoes. Curiously, they do not form the same volcanic ""line"" associated with most hotspots. They are not alone in this regard; the Cobb–Eickelberg Seamount chain in the North Pacific is another"
"of plate tectonics, the magma supply is cut, and the volcano goes dormant. Meanwhile, the process repeats all over again, this time forming a new island, on and on until the hotspot collapses. The theory was developed to explain the Hawaiian-Emperor seamount chain, where historic islands could be traced to the northwest in the direction that the Pacific Plate is moving. The early theory put these fixed sources of heat for the plumes deep within the Earth; however, recent research has led scientists to believe that hotspots are actually dynamic, and able to move on their own accord. The Galapagos"
"publications, including Herman Melville's ""The Encantadas"" of 1854. Volcanism has been continuous on the Galápagos Islands for at least 20 myr, and perhaps even longer. The mantle plume beneath the east-ward moving Nazca Plate (51 km/myr) has given rise to a 3-kilometre-thick platform under the island chain and seamounts. Besides the Galápagos Archipelago, other key tectonic features in the region include the Northern Galápagos Volcanic Province between the archipelago and the Galápagos Spreading Center (GSC) 200 km to the north at the boundary of the Nazca Plate and the Cocos Plate. This spreading center truncates into the East Pacific Rise"
"to the northeast of the subducting edge lies the continuous arc of volcanos —also known as the Central America Volcanic Arc— stretching from Costa Rica to Guatemala, and a belt of earthquakes that extends farther north, into Mexico. The northern boundary of the Cocos Plate is the Middle America Trench. The eastern boundary is a transform fault, the Panama Fracture Zone. The southern boundary is a mid-oceanic ridge, the Galapagos Rise. The western boundary is another mid-ocean ridge, the East Pacific Rise. A hotspot under the Galapagos Islands lies along the Galapagos Rise. (""see"" Galapagos hotspot) The Rivera Plate north"
"Galápagos Islands The Galápagos Islands (official name: , other Spanish name: , ), part of the Republic of Ecuador, are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed on either side of the equator in the Pacific Ocean surrounding the centre of the Western Hemisphere, west of continental Ecuador. The islands are known for their large number of endemic species and were studied by Charles Darwin during the second voyage of HMS ""Beagle"". His observations and collections contributed to the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by means of natural selection. The Galápagos Islands and their surrounding waters form the Galápagos Province"
"ranging from 1813 to 2008. The neighboring islands of Santiago and Fernandina last erupted in 1906 and 2009, respectively. Overall, the 9 active volcanoes in the archipelago have erupted 24 times between 1961 and 2011. The shape of these volcanoes is that of an ""overturned soup bowl"" as opposed to the ""overturned saucer plate"" of the Hawaiian Islands. The Galápagos's shape is due to the pattern of radial and circumferential fissure, radial on the flanks, but circumferential near the caldera summits. It is the circumferential fissures which give rise to stacks of short lava flows. The volcanoes at the west"
"Volcanoes of the Galápagos Islands The Galápagos Islands are an isolated set of volcanoes, consisting of shield volcanoes and lava plateaus, located west of Ecuador. They are driven by the Galápagos hotspot, and are between 4.2 million and 700,000 years of age. The largest island, Isabela, consists of six coalesced shield volcanoes, each delineated by a large summit caldera. Española, the oldest island, and Fernandina, the youngest, are also shield volcanoes, as are most of the other islands in the chain. The Galápagos Islands are perched on a large lava plateau known as the Galápagos Platform, which creates a shallow-water"
"remains of an extinct volcano that reaches a maximum above sea level, it is situated north west of the main Galápagos Island group on the Wolf-Darwin Lineament that extends from the Galápagos Platform to the Galápagos Spreading Center, a mid ocean ridge separating the Nazca and Cocos tectonic plates. Like its near neighbour Darwin Island, Wolf Island is upstream of the magma plume, in terms of plate movement, that forms the main Galápagos Islands and does not fit in with the formation of those islands. There are currently two theories on the formation of the lineament and therefore Wolf island:"
"volcanic eruptions of the last 11,700 years occurred at volcanoes in the Ring of Fire. The Ring of Fire is a direct result of plate tectonics: the movement and collisions of lithospheric plates, especially subduction in the northern portion. 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. The presence of a belt of volcanic activity surrounding the Pacific Ocean was observed in the 19th century. ""They [the Japanese Islands] are in the line of that immense circle of"
"the Hawaiian islands, the Galapagos (along with associated hotspot) appear to be created from a mantle plume. This plume stays in place while the Nazca Plate moves above it; the relative movement of this plate is 0.46 degrees per million years. The volcano itself is estimated to be less than half a million years old; the oceanic plate beneath it is theorized to be around 10 million years old. Wolf is situated at the northern end of Isabela Island in the Galapagos, and sits on the Equator, one of six coalescing volcanoes that make up this island (the others being"
"Eruptions of basaltic to rhyolitic volcanoes and hypabyssal rocks of the Alert Bay Volcanic Belt in northern Vancouver Island are probably linked with the subducted margin flanked by the Explorer and Juan de Fuca Plates at the Cascadia subduction zone. It appears to have been active during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. However, no Holocene eruptions are known, and volcanic activity in the belt has likely ceased. 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 km. It lies between the Pacific Ocean to"
"collision took place. Picrite from the Duarte Complex in central Hispaniola and the Enriched Basalts in southern Haiti have been inferred as Galapagos hotspot-type island plateau rocks. The Beloc Formation on the southern peninsula of Haiti preserves tektites, with shocked quartz and plagioclase formed by the asteroid that struck the Yucatan Peninsula and caused the K-Pg mass extinction. Into the Paleogene at the start of the Cenozoic, volcanism, metamorphism and plutonism continued underwater until the Eocene, still largely below water. However, by the middle Eocene, the amalgamated island arcs collided with the southern margin of the North American Plate at"
"Like the others, the island was formed by the Galápagos hotspot. The island is an active shield volcano whose last eruption started on September 4, 2017. The plume for that eruption reached of elevation. Volcanoes of the Galápagos Islands The Galápagos Islands are an isolated set of volcanoes, consisting of shield volcanoes and lava plateaus, located west of Ecuador. They are driven by the Galápagos hotspot, and are between 4.2 million and 700,000 years of age. The largest island, Isabela, consists of six coalesced shield volcanoes, each delineated by a large summit caldera. Española, the oldest island, and Fernandina, the"
"Alcedo Volcano Alcedo Volcano is one of the six coalescing shield volcanoes that make up Isabela Island in the Galapagos. The remote location of the volcano has meant that even the most recent eruption in 1993 was not recorded until two years later. It is also the only volcano in the Galapagos to have erupted rhyolite and basaltic lava. The volcano has the largest number of wild tortoises of any of the volcanoes in the Galapagos, though their genetic diversity is amongst the lowest of any of the breeds in the archipelago. The habitat of the tortoises was threatened when"
"they interact with the mantle wedge above the downgoing plate. This subduction does not result in volcanic activity everywhere; in places where the process is shallower (""flat slab"" subduction) there is no recent volcanism. Volcanism has been ongoing in the Andes since about 185 million years ago, with an increase about 27 million years ago when the Farallon Plate broke up. In 1994, the Andes were considered to contain about 178 volcanoes with Holocene activity, of which 60 were further assumed to have been active during historical time. Taapaca is part of the Central Volcanic Zone of the Andes, which"
"continuing southwards in the Luzon Volcanic Arc (including Green Island and Orchid Island), the Eurasian Plate is sliding under the Philippine Sea Plate. Most of the island comprises a huge fault block tilted to the west. The western part of the island, and much of the central range, consists of sedimentary deposits scraped from the descending edge of the Eurasian Plate. In the northeast of the island, and continuing eastwards in the Ryukyu Volcanic Arc, the Philippine Sea Plate slides under the Eurasian Plate. The tectonic boundary remains active, and Taiwan experiences 15,000 to 18,000 earthquakes each year, of which"
"American plates. This means that it is currently being deformed by the tectonic stresses caused by the interaction of these plates. These stresses may cause earthquakes and tsunamis. These seismic events, along with landslides, represent some of the most dangerous geologic hazards in the island and in the northeastern Caribbean. The most recent major earthquake occurred on October 11, 1918 and had an estimated magnitude of 7.5 on the Richter scale. It originated off the coast of Aguadilla and was accompanied by a tsunami. Lying about 110 miles (120 km) north of Puerto Rico in the Atlantic Ocean at the"
"South Aegean Volcanic Arc The South Aegean Volcanic Arc is a chain of volcanic islands in the South Aegean Sea formed by plate tectonics as a consequence of the subduction of the African tectonic plate beneath the Eurasian plate. The southern Aegean is one of the most rapidly deforming regions of the Himalayan-Alpine mountain belt. The active portion of the South Aegean Arc comprises a number of dormant and historically active volcanoes, including Aegina, Methana, Milos, Santorini and Kolumbo, and Kos, Nisyros and Yali. Of these, only Santorini, Kolumbo and Nisyros have either erupted or shown any significant evidence of"
"is a transform boundary with the Juan de Fuca Plate, the Blanco Fracture Zone. The subducting Gorda Plate is connected with the volcanoes in northern California, namely, Mount Shasta and Lassen Peak. Lassen Peak last erupted in 1914–1917. Gorda Plate The Gorda Plate, located beneath the Pacific Ocean off the coast of northern California, is one of the northern remnants of the Farallon Plate. It is sometimes referred to (by, for example, publications from the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program) as simply the southernmost portion of the neighboring Juan de Fuca Plate, another Farallon remnant. Unlike most tectonic plates, the Gorda"
"Islands are a volcanic arc lying above the convergent boundary where the Pacific Plate is being subducted beneath the North American Plate. Earthquakes in the area are caused by movement along the plate interface (such as the 1965 Rat Islands earthquake), normal faulting within the outer rise and within the subducting slab. The earthquake's epicenter lies close to a major break in the Aleutian chain, between the Andreanof Islands to the east and the Rat Islands to the west, along what is known as the Amchitka channel. In this region there is evidence for a tear in the lithosphere of"
"topographic features such as mountains, volcanoes, mid-ocean ridges, and oceanic trenches. The majority of the world's active volcanoes occur along plate boundaries, with the Pacific Plate's Ring of Fire being the most active and widely known today. These boundaries are discussed in further detail below. Some volcanoes occur in the interiors of plates, and these have been variously attributed to internal plate deformation and to mantle plumes. As explained above, tectonic plates may include continental crust or oceanic crust, and most plates contain both. For example, the African Plate includes the continent and parts of the floor of the Atlantic"
"as the Central American Volcanic Chain. The city has a long history of volcanic and seismic activity which arise from the relative movements of two crustal plates which intersect near the southwestern border of Central America. The Cocos plate, located east of the East Pacific Rise, is moving northeastward and is slowly being submerged under the Caribbean Plate. The zone of dipping is initiated at the surface of the Middle America Trench, which extends 4 to 5 kilometers deep along the Pacific Coast from Mexico to Costa Rica. But rather than a simple crustal movement between the two plates the"
"atop the Caribbean Plate. This tectonic plate converges with the Cocos, Nazca, and North American plates to form the Middle America Trench, a major subduction zone. The Middle America Trench is situated some off the Pacific coast of Central America and runs roughly parallel to it. Many large earthquakes have occurred as a result of seismic activity at the Middle America Trench. For example, subduction of the Cocos Plate beneath the North American Plate at the Middle America Trench is believed to have caused the 1985 Mexico City earthquake that killed as many as 40,000 people. Seismic activity at the"
"adversely affected wildlife in the waters surrounding the islands, as the waters were warmer than normal. Corals and barnacles suffered, hammerhead sharks were driven away, and most of the island's seabirds failed to breed in 1997–98. The mortality rate of marine iguanas rose as the green algae they feed on was replaced by inedible red algae. During the 1982–83 El Niño, 70% of the marine iguanas starved to death because of this. Galápagos Islands The Galápagos Islands (official name: , other Spanish name: , ), part of the Republic of Ecuador, are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed on either"
"Antarctic Plate subduct beneath the South America Plate in the Peru-Chile Trench at a pace of and , respectively, resulting in volcanic activity and geothermal manifestations in the Andes. Present-day volcanism occurs within four discrete belts: The Northern Volcanic Zone (NVZ), the Central Volcanic Zone (CVZ), the Southern Volcanic Zone (SVZ) and the Austral Volcanic Zone (AVZ). These extend between 2°N-5°S, 16°S-28°S, 33°S-46°S and 49°S-55°S, respectively. Between them they contain about 60 active volcanoes and 118 volcanoes which appear to have been active during the Holocene, not including potentially active very large silicic volcanic systems or very small monogenetic ones."
"Pacific plate is being subducted beneath the Aleutian Islands arc. Farther 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; this portion excludes Australia, since it lies in the center of its tectonic plate. Indonesia lies between the Ring of Fire along the northeastern islands adjacent to and including New Guinea and the Alpide belt along the south and west from Sumatra, Java,"
"Plate which is now mostly subducted under the North American Plate. The North American Plate itself is moving slowly in a generally southwest direction, sliding over the smaller plates as well as the huge oceanic Pacific Plate (which is moving in a northwest direction) in other locations such as the San Andreas Fault in central and southern California. Tectonic processes active in the Cascadia subduction zone region include accretion, subduction, deep earthquakes, and active volcanism of the Cascades. This volcanism has included such notable eruptions as Mount Mazama (Crater Lake) about 7,500 years ago, the Mount Meager massif (Bridge River"
"Geology of the Lassen volcanic area The geology of the Lassen volcanic area presents a record of sedimentation and volcanic activity in the area in and around Lassen Volcanic National Park in Northern California, U.S. The park is located in the southernmost part of the Cascade Mountain Range in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. Pacific Oceanic tectonic plates have plunged below the North American Plate in this part of North America for hundreds of millions of years. Heat from these subducting plates has fed scores of volcanoes in California, Oregon, Washington and British Columbia over at least"