Volcanoes

A volcano—often, but not always, a cone-shaped mountain—is an opening in the Earth’s crust through which molten rock, called magma erupts. When a volcano erupts and hurls out...

Hot-spot volcanoes

Many volcanoes form near the edges of tectonic plates—but not all of them. Hot-spot volcanoes are found above mantle plumes, areas beneath the Earth's crust where magma from the...

Supervolcanoes

A supervolcano is a volcano that erupts more than 1000 cubic kilometres of magma. Such a volcano would have a devastating effect over a very wide area, but, luckily, supervolcanoes...

Geysers

Rainwater may trickle down through cracks in rocks to deeper layers—on average, 2000 metres (6500 feet)—where it is heated by magma that has seeped into the Earth's crust from...

Types of volcanic eruption

When volcanoes erupt, lava, pumice, ash and gas are all expelled from a volcanic vent—an opening in the Earth’s crust. Eruptions range from gentle lava flows to violent...

Great volcanic eruptions

Volcanic eruptions, the most powerful explosions on Earth, are incredibly destructive. During the eruption of Krakatoa (today called Krakatau), a volcano situated between the...

Eruption of Vesuvius

In AD 79, the volcano Mount Vesuvius in southern Italy erupted violently. It was the days of the Roman Empire, then at its height. During the eruption, nearby Roman towns and...

Volcanoes A-Z