Ring of Fire world's 25 largest volcanic eruptions of the last 11,700 years occurred at volcanoes in the Ring of Fire. The famous and very active San Andreas Fault zone of California is a transform fault which offsets a portion of the East Pacific Rise under the southwestern United States and Mexico; the motion of the fault generates numerous small earthquakes, at multiple times a day, most of which are too small to be felt. The active Queen Charlotte Fault on the west coast of the Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, has generated three large earthquakes during the 20th century: a magnitude 7 event
Alpide belt Alpide belt The Alpide belt or Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt is a seismic belt and orogenic belt that includes an array of mountain ranges extending along the southern margin of Eurasia, stretching from Java to Sumatra through the Himalayas, the Mediterranean, and out into the Atlantic. It includes the Alps, the Carpathians, the Pyrenees, the mountains of Anatolia and Iran, the Hindu Kush, and the mountains of Southeast Asia. It is the second most seismically active region in the world, after the circum-Pacific belt (the Ring of Fire), with 17% of the world's largest earthquakes. The Alpide belt is being created