MOUNT SINABUNG

Subject : Geography

Context :Recently, the Mount Sinabung has erupted again and belching a massive column of volcanic ash and smoke 3,000 metres (3 km) into the sky.

Concept :

Mount Sinabung

It is a Pleistocene-to-Holocene stratovolcano of andesite and dacite.
It is located in the Karo plateau of Karo Regency, North Sumatra, Indonesia.
It is located on the seismically active zone known as the “Ring of Fire” i.e. an arc of volcanoes and fault lines encircling the Pacific Ocean.

Why volcanic eruption is common in Indonesia?

Indonesia is home to many active volcanoes due to its position on the “Ring of Fire” or the Circum-Pacific Belt.
The Circum Pacific Belt is an area along the Pacific Ocean characterised by active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes.
The Ring of Fire is home to about 75 per cent of the world’s volcanoes and about 90 per cent of its earthquakes.
It is a horseshoe-shaped seismically active belt of earthquake epicentres, volcanoes, and tectonic plate boundaries that fringes the Pacific basin.
It follows chains of island arcs such as Tonga and New Hebrides, the Indonesian archipelago, the Philippines, Japan, the Kuril Islands, and the Aleutians, as well as other arc-shaped geomorphic features, such as the western coast of North America and the Andes Mountains.