Operation: Over-seas: Cotopaxi and the Ring of Fire

I picked volcanoes because I thought it might be a fun topic since there are ''only a few in the country'' (about 29)actually, the entire country is riddled with them!!!! I have made a graph that hopefully will help you understand my weeks worth of work in a minute.

Cotopaxi (Ecuador)
Pyroclastic flows from this volcano have the nearby city of Latacunga two or three times in the last 200 years.

Volcanoes all over the world

Stratovolcanoes,a.k.a. composite volcanoes (compared to the less violent shield volcano) are able to go extinct for tens of thousands of years between eruptions. Not so much with Cotopaxi!(also a stratovolcano) It has exploded more than 50 times since 1738! Believe me,that is one big, scary volcano. It is also the second highest mountain in Ecuador.(The tallest is Chimborazo.)

According to my graph, Aconcagua is the highest mountain, but Denali(mount McKinley) is still almost twice as tall! For example, Oliver standing on a table next to Mr. Schrankler is higher than Mr. Schrankler, but Mr. Schrankler is still taller. Aconcagua may have a higher summit elevation, but Denali has a mucho less base elevation(see my graph for example.)

The ring of fire is a 40,000 km (25,000 mi) upside down horseshoe shape that spreads all the way from the ross ice shelf alllllllllll the way around the pacific ocean, along the Andes through Mexico, through San Francisco, to Alaska, down the Aleutians, to Kamchatka, Japan, New Zealand, and finally Antarctica again. That is one big ring of fire if you ask me! The Ring of Fire has 452 volcanoes and is home to over 75% of the world's active and dormant volcanoes.

I hope you think my work was worth it. I learned a lot about volcanoes and that is important for me because there are so many around us in Ecuador. I think they are cool works of nature.

Niko

Here is a link I liked. Check it out

http://www.volcano.si.edu/index.cfm