The Ring of Fire is a huge belt of active and dormant volcanoes surrounding most of the Pacific Ocean. It runs down Japan to the west coast of the Americas in southern Chile, through islands off the coast of Alaska, down to the Philippines. Some geologists also have Indonesian volcanic chains in the ring.
These volcanoes occur due to subduction – the movement of the tectonic plates below the adjacent plates – lower the melting point of the mantle rock. The rock faces the magma and rises to the surface, erupting as a volcano.
However, Ring of Fire does this sinking on a large scale. “The special thing about the fire ring is that multiple ocean plates in the Pacific Ocean have subduction boundaries,” Rok Vanderkruysen, a volcanologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Vanderkluysen explains that about 90% of the boundaries of the 34,000 miles (55,000 km) of subduction plates on Earth are found in the Pacific Ocean.
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This structural movement also causes earthquakes. Jeffrey Carson, professor emeritus of tectonics at Syracuse University in New York, told Live Science when one plate is forced under another, “there are a lot of kicks and screams as the plates go against each other.” “And that’s where the biggest earthquake on our planet occurs.”
Ring fires include about 75% of the Earth’s active volcanoes, and 90% of measured earthquakes.
What’s the name?
The fire in the ring of name is hotly contested among researchers. “Many scientists dislike the term,” Vander Kruissen said. One is not actually a perfect ring. Volcanoes trace the edges of tectonic plates that have only been subducted in the north, east and west of the Pacific Ocean.
Also, some areas of the ring are free of volcanic activity, such as Peru and Central Chile.
Additionally, the Ring of Fire contains over 450 volcanoes in different regions. And all of them differ in the production, storage and positioning of the subduction plates, Vanderkrusen said.
“each [volcano] From a research perspective, there is a unique history and flavour that makes it more effective to study individually than to try to tie together all volcanic volcanic rings that are not geologically linked,” he said.
Related: Sleeping subduction zones can awaken and form a new “ring of fire” that engulfs the Atlantic Ocean
Some experts believe the term takes on a false meaning in popular culture and that it is one big structure, told Live Science by Eric Cremetti, a volcanologist at Dennison University in Granville, Ohio. “It works well as a way to explain the fact that there are so many volcanoes along the edge of the Pacific Ocean,” he said, but the ring is “a geographical coincidence of our present moment on Earth.”
One major misconception is “the catastrophic concept that all volcanoes in the ring of fire are interconnected and that an eruption or earthquake in one location can cause an entire region with dramatic consequences,” Vander Kruysen said. For scientists, it is clear that eruptions in Japan do not cause Chilean eruptions, but for example, the term is sometimes used to suggest that it is possible, he said.
“The Invaluable Nature Research Institute for Volcanic Activity”
Research on the Ring of Fire has spread across many fields. “Because of the enormous number, the Pacific region is an immeasurable natural laboratory for volcanic and explosive volcanic activity,” Vander Kruysen said, as about two-thirds of the volcanoes that erupted on Earth since 1960.
Volcanologists can use the data from the ring to learn about the various eruptions that occur there. “Some erupts steady without massive accumulation, while others are sporadic but devastating,” Robert Butler, a tectonics plate at the University of Aberdeen, told Live Science in an email.
Different types of plate interactions in the Pacific act as a “testbed” to learn what leads to different types of eruptions, explained Cremetti.
Cremetti hopes that the Ring of Fire Research will ultimately reveal the inner workings of the volcano several miles below sea level. Over the next decade or 20 years, he believes scientists will be able to learn where and how magma is preserved during eruptions, and how long it takes it to understand more about the transition from dormant to eruptions.
Seismicologists are studying fire rings because more than 80% of earthquakes over 8.0 have occurred there. Researchers can investigate earthquakes in the fire ring and learn more about how stress accumulates in the subduction zone before a powerful earthquake, Butler said.
The vast amount of data helps scientists distinguish between the types of extreme events and their causes. “This is a common problem that is necessary to organize geology, differences between the frequent, less serious events, and rarely, but very boring,” Butler said.
Analyses of fire volcanoes and earthquakes can help scientists improve their predictions for extreme risks of volcanic eruptions. Scientists estimate that 800 million people (about 10% of the world’s population) live within 62 miles (100 kilometers) of an active volcano. “In the future, there will be massive volcanic eruptions that may occur near population centers and have global impacts,” Marc-Antoine Longpré, a volcanologist at Cuny Graduate Center, told Live Science.
Earthquakes in the ring and the resulting tsunami are also of great concern. Researchers can use Ring of Fire seismic data to develop early warning systems or prediction tools, Vanderkrusen said.
US Volcano Quiz: How many names can you give in 10 minutes?
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