Ring of Fire volcanic eruptions of the last 11,700 years occurred at volcanoes in the Ring of Fire. The Ring of Fire is a direct result of plate tectonics: the movement and collisions of lithospheric plates, especially subduction in the northern portion. The southern portion is more complex, with a number of smaller tectonic plates in collision with the Pacific plate from the Mariana Islands, the Philippines, Bougainville, Tonga, and New Zealand. The presence of a belt of volcanic activity surrounding the Pacific Ocean was observed in the 19th century. "They [the Japanese Islands] are in the line of that immense circle of
Ring of Fire the south by the continent of Antarctica, which includes many large volcanoes. The makeup and structure of the volcanoes in Antarctica change largely from the other places around the ring. In contrast, the Antarctic Plate is almost completely surrounded by extensional zones, with several mid-ocean ridges which encircle it, with only a small subduction zone at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, reaching eastward to the remote South Sandwich Islands. The most well known volcano in Antarctica is Mount Erebus, which is also the world's southernmost active volcano. In many respects the geology of the Antarctic Peninsula is an extension