The ring of fire is a geographic region in the pacific notorious for its volcanic activity. The reason for the level of tectonic activity in this region is a strange plate arrangement.
It is a very interesting region with millions of years of history. Ring of fire also known as rim of fire or the pacific rim of fire. This is a region that is a horseshoe shaped belt which is about 40,000 km long and has an average width of 500 km.
This region includes the Pacific coasts of South America, North America , the Kamchatka peninsula of Russia, and some islands in the western Pacific Ocean. It houses about two-thirds of the entire world's volcanoes, consisting of about 915 volcanoes. Within its rich history of more than 35 million years, the ring of fire has contributed to almost 90 percent of the world's earthquakes. Although there is a disagreement between geologists about the exact regions falling under this ring, some places like Japan, Fiji, Philippines, Java, Antarctic peninsula, Andes region, are sure members of the group. We can see a lot of notorious regions out of this group like the Hawaaiian islands, which are extremely prone to tectonic activity, but are not in this region.
There have been almost 350 plus active volcanoes during the historic period of this region. The belt has witnessed most of the major earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in the planet's history. The four largest volcanic eruptions on Earth in the last 11,700 years occurred at volcanoes in the Ring of Fire. They are the eruptions at Fisher Caldera(Alaska, 8700 BC), Kuril Lake (Kamchatka, 6450 BC), Kikai Caldera (Japan, 5480 BC) and Mount Mazama (Oregon, 5677 BC). More broadly, twenty of the twenty-five largest volcanic eruptions on Earth till now have occurred at the Ring of Fire volcanoes.
Lately this region has been going through a hard time. We all know that the Earth's crust is not a single entity, but a collection of small and large tectonic plates. The phenomenon called subduction of plates is the reason for the extreme volcanic activity and earthquakes in this region. Subduction is a geological process in which the oceanic lithosphere is pushed into the Earth's mantle at convergent boundaries (where the plate boundaries meet). When The oceanic lithosphere of a tectonic plate converges with the less dense lithosphere of a second plate, the heavier plate dives beneath the second plate and sinks into the mantle. The most powerful earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and landslides occur when one plate is thrusted beneath another (a subduction zone) due to them colliding.
The Ring of Fire has always been a hot topic of discussion among the world media. The geographic region also contains the deepest point ever discovered , The Challenger Deep. The name highlights the whole nature of the place .
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