Earth’s Lava-Spewing Volcanoes, Calving Glaciers, and Other Worlds of Fire and Ice

Haleakala on Mau’i, Hawai’i, is part of a massive shield volcano that forms the eastern three-fourths of Mau’i. Its last eruption is thought to have been in the 17th century.

Aerial view of a lava tube on Kilauea Volcano, Hawai’i.

Merapi Volcano, Java, Indonesia.

Cotopaxi Volcano, Ecuador.

Ice towers formed by steam vents on the slopes of Mount Erebus, Antarctica.

Zavodovsky, the northernmost of the South Sandwich Islands, is a bleak, uninhabited, volcanic nub bin, largely covered in snow and ice. Only three miles across, it is dominated by an active stratovolcano, Mount Asphyxia, and is home to one of the largest chinstrap penguin colonies in the world, about a million pairs.

The Seltún geothermal field near Krýsuvík, Iceland.

The spectacular Cueva de los Verdes on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands is part of an extensive lava tube system over 3.7 miles long, with an additional 0.93 miles under the sea. This cave measures more than 45 feet in diameter and was used during the 16th and 17th centuries by the local population to hide from the European pirates and Muslim slave raiders who periodically attacked the island.

Easter Island, one of the world’s most isolated islands, developed over the last 750,000 years as an overlapping of three shield volcanoes—each with a summit caldera—rising from a submarine mountain range. The crater in the background, Rano Raraku, has been extensively quarried for the tuff, or consolidated volcanic ash, used for most of the moai (monolithic sculptures) placed around the island.

Marine iguanas (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) basking on the volcanic rock of Fernandina Island, Galapagos. In his 1839 Journal and Remarks, commonly known as The Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin noted Species on different islands vary in color and size.

Pollen floating on the surface of Crater Lake in Oregon. Crater Lake formed as a result of the collapse of Mount Mazama in a cataclysmic eruption about 7,700 years ago. The eruption sent ash over much of the western United States and southwestern Canada.

Lava Butte, a 500-foot cinder cone, is part of Newberry Volcano in Oregon. Like other cinder cones nearby, it was formed by a single eruption about seven thousand years ago. In July 1966, twenty-two astronauts trained here for upcoming Moon landings.

A ringed seal in Croker Bay off the southern coast of Devon Island in the eastern high Arctic.

Halema’uma’u Crater, on the summit of the Kilauea Volcano, is said to be the home of Pele, the tempestuous volcano goddess of ancient Hawaiian legends. Her legendary beauty and anger are celebrated in numerous songs and chants.

Vent in the crater of La Grande Soufrière Volcano, Guadeloupe.