143 Fun Facts About Volcanoes

Which volcano, one of the most active in the world, towers over the Sicilian city of Catania?

Mount Etna erupts so often that its height keeps changing; in 1669 its lava destroyed a string of villages and flowed on to Catania itself.

Which Roman city was buried by a volcanic eruption in 79 AD and unearthed by digs that began in the 18th century?

Pompeii lay under up to six metres of ash and debris; the excavations that began there in the mid-1700s are often counted as the birth of modern archaeology.

The Ring of Fire is a horseshoe-shaped zone of volcanic and seismic activity surrounding which ocean?

The Pacific Ocean's rim is where ocean plates dive beneath their neighbours, which lines it with volcanoes and produces about 90% of the world's earthquakes.

Which volcano towers over the Bay of Naples?

Mount Vesuvius last erupted in March 1944, during the Second World War; with millions of people living around it, it is ranked among the world's most dangerous volcanoes.

Which Hawaiian volcano is the largest active volcano on Earth by volume?

Mauna Loa covers half of the island of Hawaii and is so massive that it has pressed the sea floor beneath it down by about 8 km.

Which type of volcano has broad, gently sloping sides built up by runny lava flows, like the Hawaiian volcanoes?

Shield volcanoes look like a warrior's shield laid on the ground; they are built from fluid basalt that runs far before it cools, which is why the Hawaiian ones are so wide.

Mount St. Helens blew its top on May 18, 1980, killing 57 people, in which US state?

Washington's Mount St. Helens lost about 1,300 feet of summit when its bulging north face slid away in the largest landslide in recorded history, uncorking the blast.

Which 0-to-8 scale rates the size of eruptions much as the Richter scale rates quakes?

The Volcanic Explosivity Index is logarithmic: each step up marks roughly ten times more erupted material, so a VEI 6 such as Krakatoa in 1883 dwarfs a VEI 5 such as Mount St. Helens.

Which volcanic rock is so full of gas bubbles that it floats, sometimes forming rafts miles wide at sea?

Pumice is frothy lava that froze mid-foam; it is ground into abrasives, and tumbling denim with lumps of it is what gives stonewashed jeans their faded look.

Measured from its base on the sea floor, which Hawaiian volcano is often called the tallest mountain on Earth?

Mauna Kea stands about 4,200 metres above the sea but more than 9,000 metres above its base on the ocean floor, so over half of the mountain is hidden under water.

Which snow-capped volcano is traditionally named as the resting place of Noah's Ark?

Mount Ararat, the highest peak in Turkey, has carried the story since the Middle Ages; Genesis says only that the Ark came to rest on 'the mountains of Ararat', the name of an ancient kingdom.

What is a fast-moving cloud of hot gas, ash and rock that races down a volcano's flank called?

A pyroclastic flow hugs the ground like an avalanche; it usually tops 80 km/h at 200 to 700°C, so nobody outruns one and almost nothing in its path survives.

Iceland sits astride a mid-ocean ridge where which two tectonic plates are pulling apart?

North American and Eurasian plates are slowly splitting Iceland in two; in the Silfra rift at Thingvellir, divers can swim through the water-filled gap between them.

What steep-sided volcano type, layered from lava and ash, is also called a stratovolcano?

Composite volcanoes grow steep because their lava cools and hardens before it can travel far from the vent; Mount Fuji and Mount St. Helens are both this type.

What is a lahar?

A volcanic mudflow, or lahar, moves like wet concrete down river valleys, so it can bury towns many miles from the summit, sometimes years after an eruption when heavy rain loosens old ash.

Which tectonic process creates volcanoes when one plate slides beneath another?

Subduction occurs when one tectonic plate is forced beneath another. As the descending plate sinks into the mantle, it releases water that lowers the melting point of the overlying rock, creating magma that rises to form volcanoes.

What is the name for a volcano that has not erupted in a long time but is expected to erupt again?

Dormant volcanoes can sleep for a very long time: some go quiet for thousands of years and then reawaken, as Mount St. Helens did in 1980 after more than a century of silence.

Mount Fuji last erupted in 1707, showering ash on which city about 100 km away?

Tokyo, then the shogun's capital Edo, was dusted with ash from an eruption that followed a huge earthquake by only weeks, with tremors building under the mountain in between.

Which 1815 Indonesian eruption, the most powerful on record, caused 1816's 'Year Without a Summer'?

Mount Tambora's 1815 blast, rated VEI 7, veiled the globe in sulfur haze; the next summer snow fell in New England in June and harvests failed across Europe.

What is the general term for all solid material ejected from a volcano during an eruption?

Tephra from a single eruption settles over a huge area at once, so geologists and archaeologists use each ash layer as a time marker for whatever lies above and below it.

Crater Lake in Oregon was formed by the collapse of which ancient volcano approximately 7,700 years ago?

Mount Mazama's summit collapsed inward after a huge eruption; over the next few centuries rain and snow filled the basin to make the deepest lake in the United States.

What type of lava has a smooth, ropy surface and is named with a Hawaiian word?

Pahoehoe gets its ropes when liquid lava moving beneath a thin, still-soft crust drags and wrinkles the skin into folds; rough, jagged lava goes by another Hawaiian word, a'a.

By roughly how much did the 1991 Philippine eruption's sulfuric haze lower worldwide temperatures?

It was the second-largest terrestrial eruption of the 20th century. In the months that followed, aerosols formed a global haze layer and worldwide temperatures fell by about 0.5 degrees C (0.9 degrees F) across 1991 to 1993.

Which volcano is the most active in Antarctica?

Mount Erebus was named in 1841 by James Clark Ross after his ship HMS Erebus, which later vanished in the Arctic with Franklin's lost expedition.

Which volcanic Mediterranean island may have inspired the legend of Atlantis?

Santorini's Bronze Age eruption buried the town of Akrotiri in ash, preserving frescoes and three-storey houses; no bodies have been found, a sign that its people fled in time.

Hawaii's islands formed in a row as the Pacific Plate drifted over what kind of stationary volcanic source?

Hotspot volcanoes fall silent as the plate carries them away, so the islands age in order: Kauai's oldest rocks are about 5.5 million years old, while the Big Island is still growing.

What type of small, steep-sided volcano is built from loose lava fragments that pile up around a single vent?

Cinder cones form when gas-charged lava is blown into the air and shatters into fragments that fall back around the vent; most stand less than 300 metres high.

Which harmless gas is by far the most abundant in volcanic emissions?

Water vapor and the other gases stay dissolved in magma deep underground; as the magma rises they bubble out and expand, and that expansion is what drives explosive eruptions.

What is the name of the volcanic phenomenon where lightning occurs within an eruption column?

A dirty thunderstorm (also called volcanic lightning) occurs when lightning is produced within a volcanic eruption plume. The phenomenon is caused by the collision of charged ash particles, rock fragments, and ice crystals within the turbulent eruption column.

Which Caribbean volcano destroyed Saint-Pierre in 1902, killing about 30,000 people in minutes?

Mount Pelée's cloud of superheated gas and ash left almost no one alive in Saint-Pierre; a prisoner, Ludger Sylbaris, survived in his thick-walled cell and later toured with Barnum & Bailey's circus.

Which glassy black volcanic rock, formed when lava cools too fast for crystals to grow, was prized for razor-sharp blades?

Obsidian breaks along smooth curves that leave razor-sharp edges, so peoples including the Aztecs worked it into knives, arrowheads and even polished mirrors.

Which Congolese volcano sent fast-flowing lava through the streets of the city of Goma in 2002?

Mount Nyiragongo's lava is unusually runny and fast; when the volcano's flank cracked open in January 2002, the flows reached Goma within hours and streamed through the city.

What is global cooling caused by eruptions injecting sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere called?

A volcanic winter is the work of sulfur, not ash: most ash falls out of the sky within weeks, while the fine sulfate haze stays aloft and reflects sunlight for a year or more.

India's Deccan Traps, one of the largest outpourings of lava on Earth, erupted around the time which animals died out?

Dinosaurs vanished 66 million years ago, while these eruptions were under way; the lava was once a prime suspect, but most scientists now put the Chicxulub asteroid first, with the eruptions as a possible accomplice.

What drives a phreatic eruption?

Steam from heated groundwater does the blasting, and the name says so: 'phreatic' comes from the Greek for a well. The water flashes to vapour and hurls out rock, while liquid lava rarely appears at all.

Which Icelandic volcano's 2010 eruption caused massive air travel disruption across Europe?

Eyjafjallajökull blasted its ash straight into the jet stream, which carried it over Europe's busiest skies; six days of closed airspace stranded about 10 million travellers.

In 1973, islanders on Iceland's Heimaey pumped seawater onto advancing lava to save what?

The harbour was the island's living, home to its fishing fleet; the chilled lava stopped short of sealing the entrance and ended up as a breakwater that left the port better sheltered than before.

Ol Doinyo Lengai, an active volcano in Tanzania, takes its name, 'Mountain of God', from which people's language?

Maasai tradition makes the mountain the home of the god Engai; its strange lava flows out black and turns as white as snow within days.

What are underwater volcanic openings that emit superheated, mineral-rich water called?

Hydrothermal vents stunned scientists in 1977: the first ones found, near the Galápagos Islands, were crowded with animals living on chemical energy instead of sunlight.

Which lake fills the caldera left by a supereruption about 74,000 years ago, once blamed for nearly wiping out early humans?

Lake Toba's blast was the largest explosive eruption in millions of years, yet the idea that it nearly ended our ancestors has faded: mud from Lake Malawi shows no sign of a long chill in East Africa.

Which Philippine volcano is famed for its almost perfectly symmetrical cone?

Mayon is the most active volcano in the Philippines as well as the most shapely; its 1814 eruption buried the town of Cagsawa, where the old church's bell tower still stands among the ruins.

Which volcanic island, named for a figure of fire in Norse myth, rose from the sea off Iceland in 1963?

Surtsey has been reserved for science since it appeared: only a few researchers may land, so they can watch plants, insects and birds colonise brand-new land without human help.

Which magma property, largely set by silica content, most determines whether an eruption is explosive?

Viscosity, a liquid's resistance to flow, rises with silica: stiff magma traps its gas until it bursts out, while runny magma lets the gas escape, so Hawaiian volcanoes ooze and Cascade ones explode.

Which US national park contains the vast caldera of a supervolcano whose last supereruption was more than 600,000 years ago?

Yellowstone's most recent lava flowed some 70,000 years ago, and the heat still stored beneath the park is what keeps its famous hot springs boiling.

Which gas burst from Cameroon's volcanic Lake Nyos in 1986, silently suffocating more than 1,700 people?

Carbon dioxide from magma had been seeping into the deep water, perhaps for centuries; when it suddenly escaped, the heavy gas hugged the ground and rolled down the valleys into the villages below.

Which country is home to the volcano Popocatépetl?

Mexico's Popocatépetl, 'Smoking Mountain' in Nahuatl, has lived up to its name since December 1994, when it reawakened after decades of quiet and began dusting nearby cities with ash.

Which US state has the most volcanoes?

Alaska holds more than 130 volcanoes, the most of any US state; its Aleutian arc sees an eruption almost every year, and ash from Redoubt's 1989 eruption briefly stalled all four engines of a KLM 747.

Which Colombian volcano's 1985 eruption sent mudflows that buried the town of Armero?

Nevado del Ruiz melted its own cap of ice and snow, sending mud down river valleys to Armero, 48 km away; more than 20,000 people died, although scientists had warned of the danger.

The Hawaiian volcano Haleakalā crowns which island?

Maui's Haleakalā, the 'house of the sun', is famous for a vast summit hollow that no eruption made: it was carved mainly by erosion, as two deep valleys ate into the peak and merged.

Which type of igneous rock, formed from mafic magma, makes up most of the Earth's oceanic crust?

Basalt is the most common mafic igneous rock, characterized by its dark color and relatively low silica content. It forms the majority of the oceanic crust.

Which 1783 Icelandic eruption poisoned livestock and brought a famine that killed about a fifth of Iceland's people?

Laki poured out lava and poison gas for eight months from June 1783; its sulfurous haze drifted on across Europe, where it dimmed the summer sun and ruined harvests.

At which type of plate boundary do plates pull apart to build mid-ocean ridges?

Divergent plates part by only a few centimetres a year, yet over 100 to 200 million years that slow spreading along one mid-ocean ridge opened the whole Atlantic Ocean.

Which New Zealand volcanic island's 2019 eruption killed 22 people, many of them tourists?

White Island (Whakaari), off the Bay of Plenty, erupted on 9 December 2019 while 47 people were on it; 22 died, and the steam-driven blast led to criminal charges against the tour operators.

What are igneous rocks with under 45% silica and high mafic mineral content called?

Ultramafic rocks are igneous rocks with a very low silica content (less than 45%) and are composed primarily of mafic minerals like olivine and pyroxene.

Which volcanic rock is the typical lava of explosive Ring of Fire volcanoes?

Andesite takes its name from the Andes, which are full of it: it is the usual lava of the steep volcanoes that rise where ocean floor sinks beneath a continent.

Which Japanese volcano's sudden 2014 eruption killed 63 hikers near its summit?

Mount Ontake gave almost no warning: the blast just before noon on 27 September 2014 was driven by steam, not rising magma, and fine weather had drawn several hundred walkers onto its slopes.

Which Caribbean island lost its capital, Plymouth, to the Soufrière Hills volcano after 1995?

Montserrat's Soufrière Hills volcano awoke in July 1995 and buried much of the capital, Plymouth, in 1997; two-thirds of the islanders left and the government moved north to Brades.

What is the tallest volcano in the Solar System, located on Mars?

Olympus Mons dwarfs Everest because Mars has no moving plates: the crust sat still over the same pool of rising magma for ages, so the lava kept piling up in one place.

Which Japanese volcano's 1991 eruption killed the volcanologists Maurice and Katia Krafft?

Mount Unzen's surge of hot gas and ash on 3 June 1991 killed 43 people; one was the American Harry Glicken, who had missed the fatal blast at Mount St. Helens only because a colleague took his post.

Which 1912 eruption, the 20th century's largest, created the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes?

Novarupta drew its magma from beneath nearby Mount Katmai, whose summit caved in to form a caldera; the steaming valley got its name from a National Geographic expedition in 1916.

Which large volcanic caldera lies just west of Naples, around the town of Pozzuoli?

Campi Flegrei's ground rises and sinks by metres: columns of the Roman market at Pozzuoli carry holes bored by sea molluscs, proof that they sank below the waves and rose again.

Which Hawaiian volcano erupted almost without a break from 1983 to 2018, making it one of the most active on Earth?

Kilauea's 35-year eruption ended in 2018 with a violent finale: its lava lakes drained, the summit floor collapsed, and new vents buried whole neighbourhoods on the island's eastern tip.

Which volcano is the highest mountain in Africa?

Kilimanjaro's summit was first reached in 1889 by the German geographer Hans Meyer, who named it after his Kaiser; independent Tanzania renamed it Uhuru Peak, Swahili for 'Freedom Peak'.

What is a volcanic vent that emits only steam and gases called?

A fumarole, its name rooted in the Latin for smoke, hisses rather than gushes because its underground water boils away to steam before it reaches the surface; one giving off sulfur gases is called a solfatara.

The summit of which Ecuadorian volcano is the point farthest from Earth's centre?

Chimborazo, an inactive volcano, sits almost on the equator, where Earth bulges outward, so its summit is about 2 km farther from the planet's centre than Everest's.

What name is given to the bulbous lava lobes that form when basalt erupts underwater?

Pillow lava forms as each squirt of lava is quenched to a glassy skin by the water; finding pillows in ancient rock tells geologists that the lava erupted beneath a sea or lake.

What are large blobs of molten rock that harden in mid-air during an eruption called?

Volcanic bombs are flung out molten and shaped by their flight: 'bread-crust' bombs crack like a loaf because the skin sets hard in the air while the gassy inside keeps swelling.

Which eruption type, named for a Roman author, sends a towering ash column into the stratosphere?

Plinian eruptions honour Pliny the Younger, whose letters describe a cloud shaped like an umbrella pine rising from the eruption of 79 AD that killed his uncle, Pliny the Elder.

Villarrica, a snow-capped volcano whose crater often holds a lava lake, looms over the resort of Pucón in which country?

Chile counts Villarrica among its most active volcanoes; when it erupted before dawn on 3 March 2015, more than 3,000 people were evacuated from the towns around it.

Krakatoa lies in the strait between Sumatra and which other Indonesian island?

Krakatoa sits in the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java; since 1927 a new cone, Anak Krakatau ('child of Krakatoa'), has grown inside the caldera left by the old volcano's collapse.

What device do volcanologists use to detect ground vibrations from magma movement?

Seismographs pick up the swarms of tiny earthquakes, most too small for people to feel, that magma sets off as it forces its way upward, often the first warning that a volcano is waking.

Which South Pacific island nation was devastated in January 2022 when an undersea volcano on its doorstep exploded?

Tonga's Hunga volcano set off a tsunami that crossed the ocean to Peru and Japan, and a pressure wave in the air that circled the globe at least twice.

Which gas gives many volcanic vents and hot springs their rotten-egg smell?

Hydrogen sulfide can be smelled in the faintest traces, yet the nose is a poor alarm: at high concentrations the gas deadens the sense of smell just as it turns deadly.

Which country's highest peak is the volcano Teide, on the island of Tenerife?

Spain's Teide last erupted in 1909, and an earlier outburst had a famous witness: in 1492 Columbus's crew reported flames on Tenerife as they sailed past on their way to the Americas.

Which Mexican volcano was born in a farmer's cornfield in February 1943?

Parícutin burst from a farmer's field on 20 February 1943 and grew for nine years, burying two villages; the church tower of San Juan Parangaricutiro still rises out of the lava.

Which volcano in the Philippines erupted in 1991 with such force that global temperatures fell?

Mount Pinatubo put nearly 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, cooling the world by about 0.5°C for two years; timely warnings got people out and saved at least 5,000 lives.

Which eruption type features rhythmic, mild bursts that toss glowing cinders from fluid basalt?

Strombolian eruptions are driven by gas slugs bursting at the vent every few minutes, throwing incandescent scoria in short arcs; the style takes its name from the Aeolian island of Stromboli.

What kind of vent erupts lava along a line, often as a 'curtain of fire'?

A fissure vent can run for kilometres; cracks like these, rather than cone-shaped volcanoes, fed the largest lava floods in Earth's history, the flood basalts.

Which Indonesian volcano's 2010 eruption forced a mass evacuation near Yogyakarta?

Mount Merapi, whose name means 'Mountain of Fire', is the most active volcano in Indonesia; among those killed in 2010 was Mbah Maridjan, its spiritual gatekeeper, who had refused to leave.

What is the primary method for monitoring ground deformation around active volcanoes?

GPS and tiltmeters track the ground as it swells with rising magma: Mount St. Helens' north flank bulged outward by more than 100 metres before it blew in 1980, and Hawaiian volcanoes inflate before they erupt.

Which European volcano, erupting almost continuously for 2,000 years, is the 'Lighthouse of the Mediterranean'?

Stromboli's glowing bursts can be seen from far out at sea, hence the nickname; Jules Verne chose it as the volcano that spits his explorers back out in Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

Which ice-capped Cascade volcano towers over the cities of Seattle and Tacoma?

Mount Rainier carries more glacier ice than any other peak in the lower 48 states, and that is the danger: an eruption or collapse could turn it into mudflows that reach the Puget Sound lowlands.

Which eruption type violently expels incandescent blocks and pyroclastic flows, often with dome collapse?

The type is named for Mount Pelée in Martinique, whose 1902 eruption ranks among the worst natural disasters in history. A bulging 'Peléan spine' at the summit is often the warning sign of collapse.

Which geothermal feature of volcanic areas periodically expels hot water and steam?

Geysers take their name from Geysir in Iceland, from a word meaning 'to gush'; Geysir itself has fallen silent for years at a time, because the narrow plumbing a geyser needs is easily blocked or shifted.

In USDA soil taxonomy, what are the famously fertile soils formed in volcanic ash called?

Andisols are rich in volcanic glass and minerals such as allophane, and cover only about 1% of Earth's ice-free land. Their fertility explains the lush forests on many volcanic islands.

Which Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes lends her name to thin strands of volcanic glass?

Pele is said to live in the fire pit of Halema'uma'u; 'Pele's hair' forms when lava fountains are stretched into thin glass threads, and the droplets that fall with it are 'Pele's tears'.

Which Greek god was the counterpart of Vulcan, the Roman god whose name the volcanic island of Vulcano carries?

Hephaestus was the smith of the Greek gods; the Romans believed the smoking island was the chimney of Vulcan's forge, and the word 'volcano' probably goes back to the god's name too.

Which moon of Jupiter is the most volcanically active object in the Solar System?

Io is squeezed and stretched by the pull of Jupiter and its neighbouring moons, and the heat of that flexing keeps hundreds of volcanoes erupting, some with lava fountains dozens of kilometres high.

Which spacecraft photographed dark plumes erupting from Neptune's icy moon Triton in 1989?

Voyager 2 saw plumes of nitrogen gas and dark dust climb about 8 km and trail away downwind, on a moon so cold that nitrogen lies frozen across its surface.

The giant moai statues of which island were carved from soft volcanic rock in the crater of an extinct volcano?

Easter Island's sculptors cut nearly all of the moai from the hardened ash of a single quarry, Rano Raraku, where hundreds of statues still lie unfinished or waiting to be moved.

Which planet has more volcanoes than any other in the Solar System?

Venus's eruptions appear to have wiped away its early surface: so few impact craters remain that most of what radar sees may be only a few hundred million years old.

Roughly how many submarine volcanoes, most of them extinct, are estimated to exist worldwide?

More than one million submarine volcanoes are thought to exist, most extinct, though only about 119 are known to have erupted in the past 11,700 years; deep water suppresses explosive steam, so eruptions are detected by hydrophones.

The 1600 eruption of Peru's Huaynaputina is blamed for cold summers and a famine that deepened which country's Time of Troubles?

Russia lost perhaps two million people, about a third of its population, in the famine of 1601 to 1603; Tsar Boris Godunov handed out grain and money until the treasury ran dry.

Which Gothic novel was begun on a Swiss holiday in 1816, a summer ruined by a distant volcanic eruption?

Frankenstein grew out of a ghost-story contest that Lord Byron proposed when incessant rain kept Mary Shelley and her friends indoors at the Villa Diodati.

Roman builders mixed volcanic ash into which material, still holding up the Pantheon's dome?

Concrete made with volcanic ash from Pozzuoli could even be used underwater, and the Pantheon's roof is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome.

Which neighbour of Earth has dark 'seas' called maria that are really plains of hardened lava?

The Moon's dark plains formed when lava flooded ancient impact basins; they cover about a sixth of its surface, mostly on the side facing Earth.

Which gemstones are carried up from deep underground by volcanic pipes of the rock kimberlite?

Diamonds are mined mostly from kimberlite pipes; the rock is named after Kimberley, South Africa, where an 1871 diamond rush dug the vast open pit known as the Big Hole.

Which European capital's castle stands on Castle Rock, the plug of a 350-million-year-old volcano?

Edinburgh Castle's rock is the hard core of an ancient volcano; glaciers later wore away the softer ground around it, leaving a natural fortress.

Volcanic ash can cripple a jet airliner because it melts and then hardens inside which part?

The engines of a British Airways 747 all failed in 1982 after it flew into an ash cloud; the plane glided clear, the crew restarted them and it landed safely.

Mount Ararat, a snowy volcano and Turkey's highest peak, is the traditional resting place of what?

Noah's Ark has been tied to Mount Ararat since the Middle Ages, although the Bible speaks only of the 'mountains of Ararat', a whole region rather than one peak.

Which inhabited continent's mainland has had no volcanic eruption since Europeans settled there?

Australia's only active volcanoes stand about 4,000 km from the mainland, on remote Heard Island and the McDonald Islands.

The classic science-fair volcano foams over when vinegar is poured onto which common kitchen powder?

Baking soda is a base, so the acid in vinegar sets off a fizzing reaction that froths up and over the rim, mimicking an eruption.

In which layer of the Earth, about 2,900 km thick, does most magma begin as partly melted rock?

The mantle makes up about 84% of Earth's volume, and despite feeding the world's eruptions it is almost entirely solid rock rather than a molten sea.

What huge sea waves can a collapsing or erupting island volcano send racing across a whole ocean?

Tsunamis have caused about 20–25% of all deaths at volcanoes over the last 250 years, often striking coasts far from the eruption itself.

Which Northern Ireland landmark is made of about 40,000 interlocking columns of cooled ancient lava?

Giant's Causeway takes its name from a legend: the Irish giant Finn MacCool is said to have built it across the sea to reach a Scottish rival.

Which volcanic island group, famous for giant tortoises, lies about 900 km off the coast of Ecuador?

The Galápagos were all built by volcanoes, and the unique wildlife that Charles Darwin studied there in the 1830s inspired his theory of evolution.

New Zealand's volcano Ngauruhoe stood in for which fiery peak in The Lord of the Rings films?

Mount Doom's real-life double is sacred to Māori, and New Zealand's conservation department has asked hikers not to climb it out of respect.

Iceland heats about nine in ten of its homes with which energy, tapped from hot volcanic rock?

Geothermal heat is so plentiful in Iceland that it also warms greenhouses and swimming pools and keeps some streets and pavements free of snow and ice.

Punaluʻu Beach on Hawaii's Big Island is famous for sand of which colour, made from shattered lava?

Black sand forms at Punaluʻu when hot lava flows into the sea and explodes into fragments as it cools; endangered turtles often bask on it.

Which speckled rock, popular for kitchen countertops, forms when magma cools slowly deep underground?

Granite cools so slowly that its crystals grow big enough to see, and the name comes from the Latin granum, a grain.

Which volcano on Hawaii's Big Island erupted almost without a break from 1983 until 2018?

Kīlauea's 35-year eruption ended in 2018 with a finale that sent rivers of lava through the Puna district, burying whole neighbourhoods and Hawaii's largest natural freshwater lake.

Which US state is home to Lassen Peak, the southernmost active volcano in the Cascade Range?

California's Lassen Peak, which erupted from 1914 through 1917, and Mount St. Helens were the only two volcanoes in the contiguous United States to erupt in the 20th century.

Charles Darwin argued that which kind of coral island forms as a volcanic island sinks beneath the sea?

Atoll comes from a word in the language of the Maldives; the coral keeps growing toward the light while the old volcano subsides, leaving a ring of reef around a lagoon.

Mount Agung, revered by local Hindus as a replica of the cosmic Mount Meru, is which island's highest point?

Bali's most important temple, Besakih, stands high on the slopes of Agung, and lava from the devastating 1963 eruption missed it by mere metres.

Which 1997 disaster film stars Pierce Brosnan as a volcanologist trying to save a small mountain town?

Dante's Peak raced a rival studio's eruption film, Volcano, into cinemas and beat it by more than two months; the loser sent lava through the streets of Los Angeles.

In which French children's classic does a boy sweep out the three tiny volcanoes on his home asteroid?

The Little Prince may owe its setting to El Salvador, the volcano-studded homeland of the author's wife Consuelo, who is widely seen as the model for the prince's rose.

Which twin-peaked volcano in Russia's Caucasus is counted as the highest mountain in Europe?

Mount Elbrus is also the highest volcano in Eurasia, and its two summits, only 21 metres apart in height, are both volcanic domes.

The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens was unleashed by the largest what in recorded history?

Landslide debris tore away the whole north face and uncorked the gas-charged magma inside, so the blast shot out sideways instead of straight up.

Which Roman seaside town, buried in AD 79, still has wooden beds and doors that were turned to charcoal?

Herculaneum was a seaside retreat for the Roman elite, and the skeletons of at least 300 people were found in the boat houses along its shore.

Ludger Sylbaris survived the 1902 volcanic destruction of Saint-Pierre because he was shut inside what?

A jail cell used for solitary confinement shielded Sylbaris from the blast, and he later toured with the Barnum & Bailey circus as a celebrity survivor.

Which volcanic island, scene of a famous 1945 flag-raising photo, is topped by Mount Suribachi?

Iwo Jima is still growing: volcanic uplift has pushed its area from about 20 square kilometres in 1945 to nearly 30 by 2023.

Which New Zealand city is spread across a field of about 53 small volcanoes?

Auckland's volcanoes have each erupted only once, with one exception: Rangitoto, which erupted about 600 years ago and again some 50 years later.

Which American statesman suggested in 1784 that volcanic haze explained that year's bitter cold?

Benjamin Franklin linked 1783's eerie summer fog to the severe freeze that followed, an early suggestion that an eruption can chill the weather far from its source.

Which Russian peninsula is lined with about 160 volcanoes, including the towering Klyuchevskaya Sopka?

Kamchatka counts 29 active volcanoes among them, and its hot springs kept dozens of species alive through the last ice age.

Volcán de Fuego, the 'Volcano of Fire', looms over the old colonial city of Antigua in which country?

Guatemala's Fuego also has a Kaqchikel Maya name, Chi Q'aq', meaning 'where the fire is', and it stands only about ten miles from Antigua's tourist streets.

Hallasan, a volcano that makes up much of Jeju Island, is the highest mountain in which country?

South Korea counts Hallasan among its three main mountains, alongside Jirisan and Seoraksan, and its summit reaches 1,947 metres.

Which Canary Island's Cumbre Vieja ridge erupted for 85 days in 2021, destroying over 3,000 buildings?

La Palma gained a new peninsula where the lava reached the sea, and around 7,000 people had to be evacuated from its path.

Which Tanzanian wildlife haven lies inside the world's largest intact, unflooded volcanic caldera?

Ngorongoro formed when a large volcano erupted and collapsed on itself two to three million years ago, leaving a bowl 610 metres deep.

The 'Great Dying', Earth's worst mass extinction, is blamed on vast lava floods in which region?

Siberia's eruptions went on for roughly two million years and buried millions of square kilometres under volcanic rock.

What do Hawaii residents call the haze formed when volcanic gases react with sunlight and moisture?

Vog is a blend of 'volcanic' and 'smog', a word that is itself a blend of 'smoke' and 'fog'.

Which lake, New Zealand's largest, fills a caldera left by a supereruption about 25,600 years ago?

Taupō's Oruanui eruption was the world's largest in the past 70,000 years, and the volcano under the water has erupted 29 times in the last 30,000 years.

In which African country did Lake Nyos release a gas cloud in 1986 that suffocated whole villages?

Cameroon has since fitted the volcanic lake with a degassing system, because the heavier-than-air cloud that killed 1,746 people could otherwise build up again.

Arenal, a volcano that woke in 1968 and destroyed the town of Tabacón, stands in which country?

Costa Rica's Arenal had been quiet for hundreds of years before 1968, then kept erupting until 2010, one of the longest eruptions on Earth since 1750.

Easter Island's moai were mostly carved from which rock, quarried inside the volcano Rano Raraku?

Tuff is volcanic ash that has set solid, and nearly half of the island's statues still stand or lie at the quarry where they were cut.

Which moon of Saturn sprays plumes of water from icy 'volcanoes' near its south pole?

Enceladus throws out about 200 kilograms of material every second; some falls back as snow and the rest supplies most of Saturn's E ring.

Which Philippine volcano, about 50 km south of Manila, forms an island in a lake inside its own caldera?

Taal is the second most active volcano in its country, and most of its eruptions have burst from the island in the middle of its lake.

Which peak on the Argentina–Chile border is the highest volcano on Earth, at 6,893 metres?

Ojos del Salado is also the highest peak in Chile, and despite the arid climate a permanent lake about 100 metres wide sits near its summit.

Which remote South Atlantic island's whole population of 264 was evacuated after a 1961 eruption?

Tristan da Cunha is considered the most remote inhabited place in the world; its islanders were housed in an old air force camp in England, and most returned in 1963.

Which country on the Caspian Sea is home to nearly 400 mud volcanoes?

Azerbaijan's mud volcanoes can stand over 200 metres high, and their biggest eruptions sometimes shoot flames to a similar height.

On which Icelandic island did crews pump seawater onto advancing lava in 1973 to save the harbour?

Heimaey's islanders later put the eruption to work, using heat from the cooling lava to provide hot water and generate electricity.

Africa's second-highest mountain, an extinct volcano, gave its name to which country?

Kenya took the name of its great mountain, a volcano that formed about 3 million years after the East African Rift began to open.

Which Oscar-nominated documentary tells the story of the volcano-chasing couple Katia and Maurice Krafft?

Fire of Love, narrated by Miranda July and built from rare archive footage, was nominated for Best Documentary Feature at the 95th Academy Awards.

Which Icelandic town near the Blue Lagoon was evacuated in November 2023, weeks before lava erupted nearby?

Grindavík's eruption began on 18 December 2023, with lava fountains up to 100 metres high that could be seen from the capital.