The Tonga Subduction Zone, characterized by the world’s fastest plate convergence (~24 cm/year) and back-arc spreading rates, serves as a natural laboratory for studying plate-mantle interactions.

The subduction zones where oceanic plates sink beneath the continents produce volcanic arcs such as those that make up the “rim of fire” around the Pacific Ocean. The volcanoes are fed by molten rock ...

Tonga is located near the boundary between two tectonic plates, the Pacific plate and the Australian plate — a region known as a subduction zone. As a result, the area is home to many volcanoes.

The volcano is part of the highly active Tonga-Kermadec Islands volcanic arc, a subduction zone extending from New Zealand north-northeast to Fiji. Enditem ...

The research, recently published in the prestigious journal Science Advances, produced the most detailed picture researchers have yet of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, an area spanning more than ...