![]() The Andes Mountains include the world’s highest active volcano, Nevados Ojos del Salado, which rises to 6,879 meters (over 22,500 feet) along the Chile-Argentina border. The Andes Mountains of South America run parallel to the Peru-Chile Trench, created as the Nazca Plate subducts beneath the South American Plate. The Aleutian Islands have 27 of the United States’ 65 historically active volcanoes. The Aleutian Trench reaches a maximum depth of 7,679 meters (25,194 feet). Both geographic features continue to form as the Pacific Plate subducts beneath the North American Plate. state of Alaska, for example, run parallel to the Aleutian Trench. These arcs create both islands and continental mountain ranges. If you were to drain the water out of the Pacific Ocean, you would see a series of deep ocean trenches that run parallel to corresponding volcanic arcs along the Ring of Fire. Over millions of years, the rising magma creates a series of active volcanoes known as a volcanic arc. ![]() This subduction changes the dense mantle material into buoyant magma, which rises through the crust to the Earth’s surface. Convergent boundaries are often subduction zones, where the heavier plate slips under the lighter plate, creating a deep trench. Most tectonic activity in the Ring of Fire occurs in these geologically active zones.Ī convergent plate boundary is formed by tectonic plates crashing into each other. Sometimes these plates collide, move apart, or slide next to each other. The plates are not fixed but are constantly moving atop a layer of solid and molten rock called the mantle. Tectonic plates are huge slabs of the Earth’s crust, which fit together like pieces of a puzzle. The Ring of Fire is the result of plate tectonics. ![]() Several active and dormant volcanoes in Antarctica, however, “close” the ring. A string of 452 volcanoes stretches from the southern tip of South America, up along the coast of North America, across the Bering Strait, down through Japan, and into New Zealand. It is shaped more like a 40,000-kilometer (25,000-mile) horseshoe. The Ring of Fire isn’t quite a circular ring. Roughly 90% of all earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire, and the ring is dotted with 75% of all active volcanoes on Earth. The Ring of Fire is a string of volcanoes and sites of seismic activity, or earthquakes, around the edges of the Pacific Ocean. ![]()
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