Why is the Ring of Fire so much more active around Indonesia than in the rest of the Ring?
In: Planetary Science
I think you need to think of it a different way. Wouldn’t you expect an area with tens of thousands of islands to be more active volcanically? That is where the vast majority of islands come from.
Indonesia has tens of thousands of islands *because* it is more active.
Australia is one of the fastest moving tectonic plates and a phenomenon called subduction, where land is pushed into the earths depth, is the dominant form of land movement. That kind of tectonic plate collision leads to lots of volcanoes.
While the Nazca tectonic plate is pushed at similar speeds into South America the volcanic effect is a bit dampened by the Andean highlands being pushed up and sea volcanoes in the pacific unleashing a lot of the magma so deep under water that it doesn’t show up in the news (and only on geologists seismographs).
Indonesia on the other hand is right on the ridge, so it all ends up very photogenically and news friendly.
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