Sunda Trench is considered to be part of the Pacific Ring of Fire as well as one of a ring of oceanic trenches around the northern edges of the Australian Plate. In 2005, scientists found evidence that the 2004 earthquake activity in the area of the Java Trench could lead to further catastrophic shifting within a relatively short period of time, perhaps less than a decade. This threat has resulted in international agreements to establish a tsunami warning system in place along the Indian Ocean coast. For about half its length, off of Sumatra, it is divided into two parallel troughs by
Geology of the Pacific Ocean as the Aleutian Arc off Alaska and the Kermadec-Tonga Subduction Zone north of New Zealand. As a result of the collision of the Nazca Plate and the South American Plate, the Andes Mountains emerged in western South America, close to the Peru–Chile Trench. Many large fracture zones aligned in an east-west direction, occur in the floor of the northeastern Pacific. The Pacific is a broad ocean basin (unlike the narrow Atlantic Ocean) and extends over a width of between New Guinea and Peru. The andesite line, a zone of intense volcanic and seismic activity, is a major regional distinction in