Indonesia’s Mount Merapi erupted

Subject : Geography

Section: Places in news (Mapping)

Concept :

Recently, Mount Merapi erupted with avalanches of searing gas clouds and lava, forcing concerned national authorities to halt tourism and mining activities

About Mount Merapi:

Mount Merapi (Mountain of Fire) is one of the world’s most active volcanos located in Indonesia.
It rises to 9,551 feet and has steep slopes with dense vegetation on its lower flanks.
Merapi is the youngest in a group of volcanoes in southern Java.
It is situated at a subduction zone, where the Indo-Australian Plate is subducting under the Sunda Plate.
A series of eruptions of the volcano in late 2010, which included pyroclastic flows, killed scores of people, injured dozens more, and forced tens of thousands to evacuate the area.

Why do more volcanoes occur in Indonesia?

Indonesia is located on the Ring of Fire, a vast area around the Pacific Ocean.
It consists of over 17,000 islands and islets — and nearly 130 active volcanoes.
The Ring of Fire also referred to as the Circum-Pacific Belt, is a path along the Pacific Ocean characterized by active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes.
The abundance of volcanoes and earthquakes along the Ring of Fire is caused by the amount of movement of tectonic plates in the area.
Along much of the Ring of Fire, plates overlap at convergent boundaries called subduction zones. That is, the plate that is underneath is pushed down, or subducted, by the plate above. As 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.
A significant exception is a border between the Pacific and North American Plates. This stretch of the Ring of Fire is a transform boundary, where plates move sideways past one another.
This type of boundary generates a large number of earthquakes as tension in Earth’s crust builds up and is released.