Plymouth, Montserrat mud and lava would have been scorched and left completely non-arable by the heat of the pyroclastic flows. Plymouth was abandoned and the entire southern half of the island was declared an exclusion zone because of the continuing volcanic activity at the Soufrière Hills. The government of the island was moved to Brades, although Plymouth remains the "de jure" capital. , a new port and capital are under construction at Little Bay, on the island's northwest coast. The destruction of Plymouth caused severe economic problems for the island of Montserrat. Plymouth had been by far the largest settlement on the
Taupo Volcano Taupo Volcano Lake Taupo, in the centre of New Zealand’s North Island, is the caldera of a large rhyolitic supervolcano called the Taupo Volcano. This huge volcano has produced two of the world’s most violent eruptions in geologically recent times. The Taupo Volcano forms part of the Taupo Volcanic Zone, a region of volcanic activity that extends from Ruapehu in the South, through the Taupo and Rotorua regions, to White Island, in the Bay of Plenty. Taupo began erupting about 300,000 years ago, but the main eruptions that still affect the surrounding landscape are the Oruanui eruption, about 26,500 years