Kilauea is a basaltic volcano, driven by magma from a deep hot spot. Over time it has build a summit on top of the older Mauna Loa lava pile, and a one-sided eastern ridge extending far into the ...

The double-booked land is also known as the Afar Triangle, a low-lying region wedged into the Ethiopian Plateau. The region is not for the intrepid. The name is synonymous with remoteness. It is also ...

The last time I wrote an article for Volcanocafe it was a guest post about the Galapagos Islands, but now I’m a new member of the Volcanocafe writing team (a little bit more about me later). Deep in ...

Some nations seem decidedly unvolcanic. They lack the geology and the temperament for eruptions. Take Norway – a no-nonsense nation which prefers a bit of solitude and does not go for attention ...

Some fault systems in the world are well known for their destructive potential. Examples are Turkey’s North Anatolian fault and California’s San Andreas. In both cases, large events in the ...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any Icelandic volcano in possession of magma must be in want of an eruption. However little known the feelings and innards of such a volcano may be, any ...

Iwo Jima is famous. The battle between the US and Japanese forces are well remembered – by both sides. Before the war, about 1000 people lived here. After the war, none. There is a military base only.

It seemed to come out of nowhere. In the midst of a quiet interlude, after the hugely damaging La Palma had ended, when the hugely touristic eruption at Fagradalsfjall failed to re-appear, and the ...

The summit of Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth, is a sea floor. That may come as a surprise; after all, a sea should be at sea level. In practice, there is some flexibility on this. Three ...

To me, it’s an eruption because it’s throwing rocks and it’s on a volcano. It could be phreatic or magmatic. It’s phreatic if it’s driven by heated groundwater, or magmatic gasses from an intrusion, ...

Mid-oceanic rifts should be in the middle of the ocean they formed. And often they are, but there are exceptions. The Reykjanes Rift, south of Iceland, is one of these. It is well known for its ...

A trivia question: can you name the largest country without an active volcano? Here ‘active’ includes ‘dormant’: it is about volcanoes that have access to live magma and could in principle erupt, even ...