Volcanoes of Kamchatka

The volcanoes of Kamchatka are a large group of volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula. The Kamchatka River and the surrounding central side valley are flanked by large volcanic belts. There are about 160 volcanoes, 29 of them still active. They are in the six UNESCO World Heritage List sites in the Volcanoes of Kamchatka, most of them on the Kamchatka Peninsula. The highest volcano is Klyuchevskaya Sopka (4,750 m or 15,584 ft), the largest active volcano in the northern hemisphere. The most striking is Kronotsky, whose perfect cone was said by volcanologists Robert and Barbara Decker to be a prime candidate for the world's most beautiful volcano. In the center of Kamchatka is Eurasia's world famous Geyser Valley which was partly destroyed by a massive mudslide in June 2007. Deep seismic events and tsunamis are fairly common. Intense volcanism is caused by the subduction of the Pacific Plate. A pair of huge earthquakes occurred off the coast on October 16, 1737, and on November 4, 1952, in magnitudes ~9.3 and 8.2 respectively. More shallow earthquakes were recorded as recently as April 2006. References