• The strongest earthquake in a quarter-century rocked Taiwan on April 3, killing 12 people, stranding dozens of workers at quarries and sending some residents scrambling out the windows of damaged buildings.

• The 7.2-magnitude quake, which also injured more than 1,000, was centred off the coast of rural, mountainous Hualien County.

• Taiwan lies along the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’, the line of seismic faults encircling the Pacific Ocean where most of the world’s earthquakes occur.

What is the ‘Ring of Fire’?

• Volcanic arcs and oceanic trenches partly encircling the Pacific Basin form the so-called “Ring of Fire”, a zone of frequent earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. 

• It is also referred to as the Circum-Pacific Belt.

• Most of the active volcanoes on Earth are located underwater, along the “Ring of Fire” in the Pacific Ocean.

• Made up of more than 450 volcanoes, the Ring of Fire stretches for nearly 40,250 kilometers, running in the shape of a horseshoe (as opposed to an actual ring) from the southern tip of South America, along the west coast of North America, across the Bering Strait, down through Japan, and into New Zealand.

• Several active and dormant volcanoes in Antarctica, however, “close” the ring.

• The Ring of Fire is the result of plate tectonics. 

• Much of the volcanic activity occurs along subduction zones, which are convergent plate boundaries where two tectonic plates come together. 

• The heavier plate is shoved (or subducted) under the other plate. When this happens, melting of the plates produces magma that rises up through the overlying plate, erupting to the surface as a volcano.

• Subduction zones are also where Earth’s deepest ocean trenches are located and where deep earthquakes happen. The trenches form because as one plate subducts under another, it is bent downward. Earthquakes occur as the two plates scrape against each other and as the subducting plate bends.

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