The Ring of Fire is an enormous belt of active and dormant volcanoes that surrounds most of the Pacific Ocean. It runs from southern Chile, up the west coast of the Americas, through the islands off Alaska and down Japan to the Philippines. Some geologists also include an Indonesian chain of volcanoes in the ring.
These volcanoes arise because of subduction — the movement of a tectonic plate under a neighboring plate — which lowers the melting point of rock in the mantle. The rock turns to magma, rises to the surface and erupts as a volcano.
