A dark three dimensional map of the Pacific with large earthquakes glowing around its rim

Earthquakes around the Pacific2000 to 2025

The Pacific's
broken ring

Nearly 200,000 earthquakes light up an uneven horseshoe around the Pacific Ocean. Much of this arc follows places where oceanic plates are pushed beneath other plates, carrying the seafloor hundreds of kilometres into Earth’s mantle.

358,673global M4+ events

193,312inside the working corridor

26years observed

Check the story, go scroll it down

The Pacific’s Broken Ring

The Ring of Fire is easy to see but hard to draw

It forms where large, solid pieces of Earth’s outer layer meet and move. These pieces are called tectonic plates. In many places, one plate moves beneath another and sinks into the mantle, creating deep ocean trenches, volcanoes, and earthquakes far below the surface.

The name describes a broad and uneven zone rather than a perfect circle. Geologists have no single official boundary for it, so the number of earthquakes depends on their size, the time period, and the area being counted.

This catalog54%

of M4+ events fall within 800 km of our guide

USGS81%

of the world's largest earthquakes occur in the circum-Pacific belt

Smithsonian GVP57%

of Holocene volcanoes sit in its 41 volcanic regions

01 The edge

How wide is a ring?

Move the boundary and see how the percentage changes. Each percentage is calculated from the full list of earthquakes in the USGS catalog. The map shows a fixed sample of these earthquakes, so the same points appear each time and the map should stays smooth on a phone.

A reproducible boundary

Distance from the circum-Pacific guide

Loading the earthquake sample
inside selected corridor
800 km

54.00%of catalogued M4+ earthquakes

193,677events caught by this width

02 The fire

The name comes from what happens along the edge

Much of the Pacific rim is built from subduction zones. Dense oceanic crust bends into the mantle, earthquakes rupture along and within the sinking slab, and magma feeds volcanic arcs above it

One plate boundary, seen from the sidePlates converge
Animated cross section through a subduction zone An oceanic plate descends beneath an upper plate. Earthquakes follow the slab while magma rises to volcanoes landward of the trench oceanic plate upper plate trench volcanic arc sinking slab
1

Plates around the Pacific move toward, away from and past one another. Convergent margins make most of the famous horseshoe

2

The denser oceanic plate bends downward at a trench. Friction and rupture mark its path with earthquakes

3

Water carried down in rock and sediment helps melting occur in the hotter mantle above the slab

4

Buoyant magma rises and forms a chain of volcanoes on the landward side of the trench

57%of Holocene volcanoes

The Smithsonian count

687 volcanoes across 41 regions

The Global Volcanism Program records 1,214 volcanoes that have erupted during the Holocene, the geological period covering roughly the last 11,700 years. Of these, 687 are located in regions around the Pacific that belong to the Ring of Fire. The volcanoes make the belt visible, while the earthquakes reveal how tectonic plates move beneath the surface

See the Global Volcanism Program definition

03 The depth

The ring continues almost 700 kilometres down

A flat map shows the earthquakes from above, but it hides their depth. Rotate the 3D map of earthquake points and the ring becomes a series of sloping bands that descend beneath the surface, showing where one tectonic plate sinks below another

142,283shallow, below 70 km

45,916intermediate, 70 to 300 km

5,113deep, 300 km or more

Interactive point cloud

Ten arcs, viewed from below the surface

Loading 12,054 representative events
Drag to tilt. Scroll or pinch to zoom.

SelectedAll arcs

Median depth35.0 km

Deepest event686.4 km

The same ring, different slabs

Depth changes from arc to arc

Each bar ends at the 90th percentile. This means that 90% of the recorded earthquakes are shallower than the bar’s end. The bright mark shows the median depth, where half the earthquakes are shallower and half are deeper. In this catalog, Cascadia has mostly shallow earthquakes, while the Andes, Sunda Arc, and Tonga to New Zealand reach much greater depths

USGS classifies earthquakes from 0 to 70 km as shallow, 70 to 300 km as intermediate and 300 to 700 km as deep. Events below 70 km occur inside slabs of lithosphere sinking into the mantle.

04 The scale

The catalog contains mostly small earthquakes but a few very large earthquakes release most of the total energy

Magnitude is measured on a logarithmic scale, so a one point increase is a very large jump. An earthquake that is one magnitude higher releases about 31.6 times more energy. In this catalog, earthquakes at that higher magnitude are roughly ten times less common

Magnitude frequency

Choose a minimum magnitude

Fitted b value 0.97

Events in 26 years22,943

Average per year882.42

Share of estimated energy99.5%

Energy concentration

Two events account for about 43%.

The 2004 Sumatra-Andaman and 2011 Tohoku earthquakes both reached magnitude 9.1. Together, they account for about 43.3% of the estimated energy released by the 193,312 earthquakes in this corridor

largest twonext eightremaining 193,302

05 The pulse

A few huge earthquakes light up the record

Each vertical line below represents one day. After a large earthquake, smaller aftershocks can continue for weeks, so the record stays busy even after the original earthquake

9,497 days

Daily M4+ earthquakes inside the corridor

Selected rupture

M9.1

2011 Great Tohoku Earthquake, Japan

11 March 2011 at 05:46 UTC, 29 km deep

first day670

first week1,997

first month3,048

Counts include M4+ catalog events within 500 km after the main event. They are a proximity measure rather than a formal aftershock classification.

Field guide Around the Ring

Four cool places that worth visiting

On the map, the Ring of Fire looks like a line but on the ground, it appears as lava fields, crater lakes, young forests, and cities beneath active volcanoes. Four places show how the same plate boundary can shape very different landscapes

01 / Japan

Sakurajima

A short ferry ride from Kagoshima ends at lava fields, an ash buried shrine gate and one of Japan's most active volcanoes

Plan the visit 02 / Aotearoa New Zealand

Tongariro

On New Zealand’s North Island, young craters, old lava flows, and steaming ground show the effects of the Pacific Plate sinking beneath the Australian Plate

Explore the park 03 / United States

Mount St. Helens

In 1980, an eruption transformed the landscape around this crater in minutes. Move through the scene to see how the forest has returned over the years

Visit the monument 04 / Chile

Villarrica

Araucaria forests and solidified lava flows climb toward an active, ice-capped cone above the lakes of southern Chile.

Discover the park

Built with love and curiosity by Edo Danilyan using R, Quarto, D3, rayshader, and Canvas