Motorheads and volcanoes: How stable is the Fire Ring?
The lives of tens of thousands of people have been disrupted over the past few weeks due to seismic and volcanic activity in the Pacific Ocean fire zone.
The earthquake in Alaska, the avalanche and volcanic eruption in central Japan and the volcano in the Philippines took place over a period of several days.
As a result, the UN Disaster Risk Reduction Office has issued a warning that the Fire Ring is active. Many wonder if there is a cause for concern that something more serious will happen.
Is there a cause for concern?
The fire ring is a series of volcanic, harsh areas and unstable tectonic plates along the Pacific. It stretches over 40,000 kilometers from the southernmost tip of South America to New Zealand.
About 90% of earthquakes occur in this zone and in the ring there are 75% of all active volcanoes on Earth, or a total of 452 volcanoes.
Just last week, an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale hit the Alaskan coast and caused a tsunami that triggered an alert alarm in coastal areas in Alaska and in British Columbia, Canada.
The same day, one soldier was killed and 11 people were injured in central Japan in an avalanche caused by the eruption of the Moto-Shirane volcano.
By the end of 2017, the Sinabung volcano in Indonesia woke up after several years and caused chaos in air traffic and the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people in Bali.
All these places fall into the Fire Ring.
However, Professor Chris Elders, a geologist at Kurtin University in Australia, says such activities are quite normal.
"There is nothing unusual about what's happening," he says.
"Quite coincidentally all these activities took place at the same time in different places across the region. It does not necessarily have to be connected, "Elders said.
He adds that in this region there were volcanic activity in the past "hundreds of thousands of years".
"If you only see this small time interval compared to such a long period of time, it seems to be something special and that everything is happening at once, but if you take a step back and see the larger picture, you will see that such activities have continuity. "
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The same day, one soldier was killed and 11 people were injured in central Japan in an avalanche caused by the eruption of the Moto-Shirane volcano.
By the end of 2017, the Sinabung volcano in Indonesia woke up after several years and caused chaos in air traffic and the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people in Bali.
All these places fall into the Fire Ring.
However, Professor Chris Elders, a geologist at Kurtin University in Australia, says such activities are quite normal.
"There is nothing unusual about what's happening," he says.
"Quite coincidentally all these activities took place at the same time in different places across the region. It does not necessarily have to be connected, "Elders said.
He adds that in this region there were volcanic activity in the past "hundreds of thousands of years".
"If you only see this small time interval compared to such a long period of time, it seems to be something special and that everything is happening at once, but if you take a step back and see the larger picture, you will see that such activities have continuity. "
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