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Recently, Indonesia’s Mount Semeru spewed more ash, forcing rescuers to suspend the search for survivors as aerial images.
- The last time it erupted was in December 2020, forcing thousands of residents to take shelter.
About Mount Semeru
- The 3,676-meter (12,060-feet) mountain in Lumajang district is the highest volcano on Indonesia’s most densely populated island of Java.
- Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 270 million people, is prone to earthquakes and volcanic activity because it sits along the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” a horseshoe-shaped series of fault lines.
About Pacific Rim’s “Ring of Fire” region
- Pacific Rim’s “Ring of Fire” region is also called the Circum-Pacific Belt, it is a path along the Pacific Ocean characterized by active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes.
Pic Courtesy- Geology.
- It traces boundaries between several tectonic plates—including the Pacific, Cocos, Indian-Australian, Nazca, North American, and Philippine Plates.
- It is home to about 75 per cent of the world’s volcanoes and about 90 per cent of its earthquakes.
- In the realm of Ring of Fire, the tectonic plates overlap at convergent boundaries which results in subduction zones.
- Here, the plate which is below at the convergent boundary is pushed down, or subducted, by the plate above.
- As the rock is subducted, it melts and becomes magma. The abundance of magma so near to Earth’s surface gives rise to conditions ripe for volcanic activity.
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Volcanism
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