Volcano Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Trivia quiz questions with answers about volcanoes

Volcano Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

What is a volcano?
A: A volcano is a rupture in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface.

Earth's volcanoes occur because its crust is broken into 17 major, rigid what?
A: Tectonic plates that float on a hotter, softer layer in its mantle.

Therefore, on Earth, volcanoes are generally found where tectonic plates are doing what?
A: Diverging or converging.

The Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has volcanoes caused by what?
A: Divergent tectonic plates.

The Pacific Ring of Fire has volcanoes caused by what?
A: Convergent tectonic plates.

Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching and thinning of what?
A: The crust's plates, e.g., in the East African Rift and the Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic field and Rio Grande Rift in North America.

This type of volcanism falls under the umbrella of what?
A: Plate hypothesis volcanism.

Volcanism away from plate boundaries has also been explained as what?
A: Mantle plumes.

These so-called "hotspots", for example Hawaii, are postulated to arise from what?
A: Upwelling diapirs with magma from the core–mantle boundary, 3,000 km deep in the Earth.

Volcanoes are usually not created where two tectonic plates do what?
A: Slide past one another.

Erupting volcanoes can pose many hazards, not only in the what?
A: The immediate vicinity of the eruption.

One such hazard is that volcanic ash can be a threat to what?
A: Aircraft, in particular those with jet engines where ash particles can be melted by the high operating temperature; the melted particles then adhere to the turbine blades and alter their shape, disrupting the operation of the turbine.

Large eruptions can affect temperature as ash and droplets of sulfuric acid obscure the sun and cool the Earth's lower what?
A: Atmosphere (or troposphere).

They also absorb heat radiated from the Earth, thereby warming what?
A: The upper atmosphere (or stratosphere).

Historically, volcanic winters have caused what?
A: Catastrophic famines.

The word volcano is derived from what?
A: The name of Vulcano, a volcanic island in the Aeolian Islands of Italy whose name in turn comes from Vulcan, the god of fire in Roman mythology.

The study of volcanoes is called what?
A: Volcanology, sometimes spelled vulcanology.

At the mid-oceanic ridges, two tectonic plates diverge from one another as new oceanic crust is formed by what?
A: The cooling and solidifying of hot molten rock.

Most divergent plate boundaries are where?
A: At the bottom of the ocean.

Therefore, most volcanic activity on the Earth is submarine, forming what?
A: New seafloor.

Black smokers (also known as deep sea vents) are evidence of what?
A: This kind of volcanic activity.

Where the mid-oceanic ridge is above sea-level, what are formed?
A: Volcanic islands, for example, Iceland.

Subduction zones are places where two plates, usually an oceanic plate and a continental plate, do what?
A: Collide.

In this case, the oceanic plate subducts, or submerges, under the continental plate, forming what?
A: A deep ocean trench just offshore.

In a process called flux melting, water released from the subducting plate lowers the melting temperature of what?
A: The overlying mantle wedge, thus creating magma.

This magma tends to be extremely viscous because of its what?
A: Its high silica content, so it often does not attain the surface but cools and solidifies at depth.

When it does reach the surface, however, what is formed?
A: A volcano is formed.

Typical examples are what?
A: Mount Etna and the volcanoes in the Pacific Ring of Fire.

What are hotspots?
A: Hotspots are volcanic areas believed to be formed by mantle plumes, which are hypothesized to be columns of hot material rising from the core-mantle boundary in a fixed space that causes large-volume melting.

Because tectonic plates move across them, each volcano becomes what?
A: Dormant and is eventually re-formed as the plate advances over the postulated plume.

Lakagigar fissure vent in Iceland, the source of the major world climate alteration of 1783–84, has a chain of what along its length?
A: A chain of volcanic cones.

The most common perception of a volcano is of a what?
A: A conical mountain, spewing lava and poisonous gases from a crater at its summit.

The features of volcanoes are much more complicated and their structure and behavior depends on what?
A: A number of factors.

Some volcanoes have rugged peaks formed by lava domes rather than what?
A: A summit crater, while others have landscape features such as massive plateaus.

Vents that issue volcanic material (including lava and ash) and gases (mainly steam and magmatic gases) can develop where?
A: Anywhere on the landform and may give rise to smaller cones such as Puʻu ʻŌʻō on a flank of Hawaii's Kīlauea.

What are cryovolcanoes?
A: Ice volcanoes, found on some moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune.

Active mud volcanoes tend to involve temperatures much lower than those of igneous volcanoes except when what?
A: When the mud volcano is actually a vent of an igneous volcano.

Shield volcanoes, so named for their broad, shield-like profiles, are formed by the eruption of what?
A: Low-viscosity lava that can flow a great distance from a vent.

They generally do not explode how?
A: Catastrophically.

Since low-viscosity magma is typically low in silica, shield volcanoes are more common where?
A: In oceanic than continental settings.

The Hawaiian volcanic chain is a series of shield cones, and they are common where else?
A: In Iceland.

Lava domes are built by what?
A: Slow eruptions of highly viscous lava.

They are sometimes formed within the crater of what?
A: A previous volcanic eruption, as in the case of Mount Saint Helens, but can also form independently, as in the case of Lassen Peak.

Like stratovolcanoes, they can produce what?
A: Violent, explosive eruptions, but their lava generally does not flow far from the originating vent.

Cryptodomes are formed when viscous lava is forced upward causing the surface to do what?
A: To bulge.

How often do most cinder cones erupt?
A: Only once.

The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens was an example; lava beneath the surface of the mountain created an upward bulge which did what?
A: Slid down the north side of the mountain.

Throughout recorded history, ash produced by the explosive eruption of stratovolcanoes has posed the greatest volcanic hazard to what?
A: Human civilizations.

A super volcano usually has a large what?
A: Caldera and can produce devastation on an enormous, sometimes continental, scale.

Such volcanoes are able to severely cool global temperatures for how long?
A: For many years after the eruption due to the huge volumes of sulfur and ash released into the atmosphere.

Submarine volcanoes are common features of what?
A: The ocean floor.

In shallow water how do active volcanoes disclose their presence?
A: By blasting steam and rocky debris high above the ocean's surface.

Hydrothermal vents are common near these volcanoes, and some support what?
A: Peculiar ecosystems based on dissolved minerals.

Over time, the formations created by submarine volcanoes may become so large that they break the ocean surface as what?
A: New islands or floating pumice rafts.

Subglacial volcanoes develop underneath what?
A: Icecaps.

There is no consensus among volcanologists on how to define what?
A: An "active" volcano.

The lifespan of a volcano can vary from months to several million years, making such a distinction sometimes what?
A: Meaningless when compared to the lifespans of humans or even civilizations.

Most scientists consider a volcano active if it has erupted in the last how many years?
A: 10,000 years (Holocene times)—the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program uses this definition of active.

How many people live near active volcanoes?
A: An estimated 500 million.