There are 1511 volcanoes on earth,
and they can be found in one of
three places:
1)
where pieces of the
earth's crust are breaking apart
(called divergent plate
boundaries)
2)
where pieces of
the earth's crust are breaking apart
(called convergent plate
boundaries)
3)
hotspots
Sounds pretty technical,
huh? Well, fear not! It's really pretty easy to
understand.
Most volcanoes are found at
divergent plate boundaries. These
are where two
tectonic plates (chunks of the Earth's crust) are
moving apart. You can imagine why volcanoes might form
there -- splitting tectonic plates means gaps in the Earth's
crust!
Luckily, most of these divergent plate
boundaries are on the bottom of the ocean. Here's an
interesting fact for you -- most of the volcanic activity on
our planet is underwater! Sometimes these underwater
volcanoes can spew out enough stuff to make new islands.
Iceland was made that way!
