Volcano Mapping

Earth’s Major Tectonic Plates The arrows indicate each plate’s direction of movement.

Label on your map in orange where volcanoes are likely to occur. The volcanoes are shown by the red dots on the map.

Label on your map in red the “Ring of Fire”. This is a region that is known to experience a great deal of volcanic activity.

Label on your map in green the locations on the map where earthquakes are likely to occur.

What do you notice about where earthquakes and volcanoes occur? They both occur along the edges of plates. Various types of movement occur along different kinds of plate boundaries.

Volcanoes Plate collisions create landforms such as coastal volcanoes, islands and mountains. When plates move apart, they produce new ocean floor as magma from the mantle rises up through volcanoes and deposits new rock along the plate boundaries.

Earthquakes When the plates move apart at diverging plate boundaries, they cause vibrations that produce earthquakes. Thousands of earthquakes take place each year, but only a few of them are destructive enough to be considered disasters. Scientists have developed an instrument called a seismograph, which measures and records the intensity of earthquakes.