GEOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -The islands appear in this pattern for a specific reason: They were formed one after the other as a tectonic plate, the Pacific Plate, slid over a plume of magma-molten rock-puncturing Earth’s crust. These magma plumes aren’t small-they can extend hundreds of kilometers below Earth’s surface.

Detailed explanation-2: -Magma rises from the hot spots and erupts as lava through cracks in the Earth’s surface forming volcanoes. As a plate moves slowly across a hot spot, a chain of volcanoes or volcanic islands can form. The islands of Hawaii and Samoa were formed in this way.

Detailed explanation-3: -In areas where the plates come together, sometimes volcanoes will form. Volcanoes can also form in the middle of a plate, where magma rises upward until it erupts on the seafloor, at what is called a “hot spot.” The Hawaiian Islands were formed by such a hot spot occurring in the middle of the Pacific Plate.

Detailed explanation-4: -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.