286 articles
Parícutin
Parícutin is a volcano in Michoacán, Mexico, that erupted from 1943 to 1952 after being born in a farmer's cornfield, and no one died directly from it.
Pavonis Mons
Pavonis Mons, Latin for peacock mountain, is the central and smallest of the three Tharsis Montes shield volcanoes on Mars, about 14 km high, 375 km wide, straddling the equator, with nested summit calderas and lava tubes.
Payun Matru
Payún Matrú (Payun Matru), a Quaternary shield volcano with an 8-10 km summit caldera in Mendoza, Argentina, center of the 5,200 km² Payún Matrú volcanic field, source of Earth's longest known Quaternary lava flow.
Phlegraean Fields
The Phlegraean Fields (Campi Flegrei) is a large active volcanic caldera west of Naples, Italy, where about 400,000 people live amid ongoing ground uplift and earthquakes.
Pillow lava
Pillow lava is fluid, usually basaltic lava that chills in contact with water and solidifies as rounded, pillow-shaped masses with glassy skins, forming most new ocean floor.
Pityusa Patera
Pityusa Patera, a large volcanic depression in Malea Planum, southern Mars near Hellas basin; IAU diameter 196.51 km, formed 3.9–3.8 Ga; interpreted as a giant caldera above a crust-mantle-boundary magma chamber.
Planchon-Peteroa
Planchon-Peteroa, a complex of Azufre, Planchon, and Peteroa stratovolcanoes with overlapping calderas on the Chile-Argentina border, 3,977 m, frequently erupting ash; largest historical eruption VEI 4 in 1762; binational monitoring.
Plinian eruption
A Plinian eruption, also called a Vesuvian eruption, is the most powerful class of explosive volcanic eruption, named for Pliny the Younger's account of Vesuvius in A.D. 79.
Poco Mandasawu
Poco Mandasawu (Gunung Poco Mandasawu, Poco Likang) is a lava dome of the Ranakah volcanic complex in south-central Flores, Indonesia, near Ruteng; elevations 2,109-2,370 m are published, and the 1987 Anak Ranakah dome eruption ended 400 dormant years.
Pululahua
Pululahua, a potentially active dacitic-andesitic lava dome complex 15 km north of Quito, Ecuador, with a ~3 km depression formed by VEI ~4 eruptions 2.6–2.3 ka; last eruption ~2.2 ka; inhabited crater and geobotanical reserve.
Purico Complex
Purico Complex, a Pleistocene pyroclastic shield volcano in northern Chile's Central Volcanic Zone at 23°S 67.75°W, 5,703 m high, formed by two ~1.3 Ma ignimbrite sheets with Holocene domes, the Macon stratovolcano, and the active Alitar maar.
Putana
Putana (Jorgencal, Machuca) is a 5,884 m Holocene stratovolcano on the Chile-Bolivia border in the Central Andean arc, with vigorous summit fumaroles, sulfur mining, a reported 1810 CE eruption, and 2009 uplift unrest.
Pyroclastic flow
A pyroclastic flow, also called a nuée ardente, is a hot, dense mixture of volcanic ash, rock fragments, and gas that races down a volcano's flanks at over 100 km/h.
Quetrupillan
Quetrupillan (Complejo Volcanico Quetrupillan) is a 2,360 m glacier-covered stratovolcano in Chile's Southern Volcanic Zone, between Villarrica and Lanin, with Holocene trachyte flank vents, last confirmed eruption 255 CE, in Villarrica National Park.
Quimsachata-Oroscocha
Quimsachata-Oroscocha is a pair of monogenetic volcanoes in the Cusco Region of southern Peru; Quimsachata erupted about 11,500 years ago and Oroscocha about 6,400 years ago.
Ranakah
Ranakah, also called Anak Ranakah, is a lava-dome cluster on western Flores, Indonesia, whose youngest dome formed in a surprise VEI 3 eruption beginning 28 December 1987 after no recorded prior activity; last erupted 1991, alert level 2 since September 2026.
Rano Raraku
Rano Raraku, also known as Maunga Eo, is a volcanic tuff cone on Easter Island, Chile, and the quarry for nearly all of the island's moai statues.
Red Hill-Quemado
Red Hill-Quemado volcanic field (Quemado volcanic field): basaltic monogenetic field in Catron County, western New Mexico, on the Jemez lineament, with 40+ cinder cones and maars active from about 8 Ma to the early Holocene, including Zuni Salt Lake maar.
Reventador
Reventador (Volcán El Reventador), Ecuadorian andesitic stratovolcano 90 km east of Quito, 3,562 m; VEI 4 eruption 3 November 2002; continuously active since 2008 with daily explosions, ash plumes, and lava flows; Alert Level Orange.
Samsari Volcanic Center
Samsari Volcanic Center (Abul-Samsari ridge) is a Quaternary volcanic field of over 20 volcanoes in the Javakheti Highland, southern Georgia, 90 km WSW of Tbilisi; youngest activity under 30 ka at Tavkvetili, no confirmed Holocene eruptions.
San Francisco volcanic field
The San Francisco volcanic field is a volcanic area in northern Arizona near Flagstaff with more than 600 volcanoes, most recently erupting at Sunset Crater around 1085.
Sand Mountain Field
Sand Mountain Field (volcano 322040) is a monogenetic volcanic field of 23 basaltic cinder cones in the central Oregon Cascades NW of Mount Washington, erupting mainly about 2,950 years ago, with phreatomagmatic tephra and lava-dammed lakes.
Sanganguey
Sangangüey (Volcán Sangangüey) is a 2,340 m eroded andesitic-dacitic stratovolcano in Nayarit, Mexico, highest of the Tepic-Zacoalco graben, with 45 flank cinder cones and no confirmed historical eruptions.
Santa Ana
Santa Ana (Ilamatepec) volcano, El Salvador's highest at 2,381 m, a stratovolcano west of Coatepeque caldera; historic eruptions since 1520, 1722 San Marcelino lava flow, VEI 3 eruption on 1 October 2005.
Santa María (volcano)
Santa María, or Volcán Santa María, is an active 3,745 m stratovolcano in western Guatemala, whose 1902 Plinian eruption, Guatemala's largest, has been followed since 1922 by the Santiaguito lava dome.
Santorini caldera
The Santorini caldera is a large, largely submerged volcanic caldera in the Aegean Sea, flooded as a bay ringed by the cliffs of Thera and Therasia.
Severny
Severny (volcano 300700) is a late Quaternary shield volcano, 1,936 m, in the northern Sredinny Range of central Kamchatka, Russia; last confirmed eruption 1550 BCE from the Tobeltsen cinder cone on its WSW flank.
Sheveluch
Sheveluch (Shiveluch, Шивелуч) is a 3,283 m andesitic stratovolcano, the northernmost active volcano on Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, with at least 60 large Holocene eruptions, a 1964 edifice-collapse eruption, and an ongoing lava-dome eruption since 1980/1999 including the April 2023 paroxysm.
Shield volcano
A shield volcano, or lava shield, is a broad, gently sloping volcano built of fluid basaltic lava flows, named for a warrior's shield lying flat.
Shiga (landform)
Shiga (志賀, Shiga-Kogen) is an andesitic shield-volcano complex in Nagano and Gunma, Japan, north of Kusatsu-Shirane; reclassified as active with eruptions about 6,400 and 400 years ago.