Full glossary

The Chaîne des Puys in the Massif Central of southern France is one of Europe's youngest volcanic fields. It consists of numerous cinder cones and maars roughly arranged on a N-S trending line. The last activity occurred only about 6000 years ago, which is why the volcanoes should be considered still active although there are no signs at present of any new activity to be expected in any near future.

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The Chao lava dome in northern Chile near Calama town is one of the largest known lava domes in the world. It measures 14.5 km in length and 350-400 m in height.

Chikurachki stratovolcano forms highest peak on Paramushir Island in the northern Kurile island arc just south of Kamchatka Peninsula. It is one of the region's most active volcanoes.
The volcano itself is a relatively small cone, compared to other volcanoes of the Kurile Islands, but it is built on top of the high-lying remnants of an older and now extinct predecessor volcano. The dominantlyc basaltic one has steep slopes with little erosion and a shallow summit crater of approximately 450 m in diameter. The upper part of Chikurachki's cone is red, caused by oxidized basaltic-to-andesitic scoria deposits.

Eruptions of Chikurachki volcano:
There are 2 principal types of eruptions from Chikurachki: 1) frequent strombolian (mildly explosive) eruptions, such as in 1958, 1961, 1964, 1973, 2002, 2003, and 2) (sub-)plinian (extremely violent and dangerous) explosive eruptions such as in 1853 and 1986.
The strombolian-type eruptions usually last between several days to few weeks, and produce ejections of incandescent lava reaching 100-500 m height above the crater, but can occasionally produce ash plumes of up to 3 km height.
Many eruptions from Chikurachki are accompanied by lava flows. Some have reached the sea and form capes on the NW coast, and there are young lava flows on the upper eastern flank.
Basaltic plinian eruptions are a globally rare phenomenon, but common at Chikurachki volcano, and it is estimated that they have occurred every 100–200 years. Such eruptions - similar to the Icelandic Grimsvötn's eruption in June 2011 - are capable of producing tall ash plumes reaching 10-20 km and pose a significant hazard to aviation in an area densely populated by flight routes from N-America to Asia.

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Volcán Chiliques is a stratovolcano in northern Chile immediately south of Laguna Lejía. The volcano consists of a symmetrical cone rising 1000 m from the surrounding terrain and contains a 500 m wide crater. Several young lava flows are seen on its flanks and some might be younger than 10,000 years. The largest flow extends 5 km to the NW, but older flows have reached 10 km distance on the north flank towards Laguna Lejía.
In April 2002, first signs of a possible reawakening of the volcano were detected as new hot spots inside the crater.

Chimborazo volcano is Ecuador's highest active volcano and the highest in the Northern Andean Volcanic Zone. The massive, ice-capped stratovolcano lies at the southwest end of the main Ecuadorian volcanic arc, the so-called "Avenida de los Volcanes" ("Avenue of Volcanoes") and is located ca. 150 km SSW of Quito and 28 km NW of the town of Riobamba.

Chimborazo had been thought to be extinct, but new studies have shown that it still is an active volcano. Although there are no historical eruptions,
Chimborazo erupted at least 7 times during the past 10,000 years. These eruptions produced pyroclastic surges that reached down to 3800 m elevation. The average time interval between single eruptions is about 1000 years and the last eruption occurred about 1400 years ago, which means that statistically, it is due for another one.

Due to its great height and its geologic history of explosive eruptions, and closeness to populated areas in Ambato and Riobamba basins, it should be considered a dangerous volcano.

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Chinameca volcano (also known as El Pacayal) is a small stratovolcano next to the larger San Miguel volcano in eastern El Salvador. It is connected to San Miguel across a low saddle to the SE.
Chinameca is truncated by a 2-km-wide, steep-sided caldera, Laguna Seca el Pacayal. Coffee plantations cover most of the flanks of the volcano.

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Chirinkotan volcano is a large, mostly submerged stratovolcano forming a small largely unvegetated and 3 km wide island in the Kuril Island chain. It is located at the far end of an E-W-trending volcanic chain that extends nearly 50 km west of the central part of the main Kuril Islands arc.
The volcano is one of the Kurile's most active. Historical eruptions included lava flows on the SE flank during an eruption in the 1880s and were observed by the English fur trader Captain Snow.

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Chirip volcano (also written as Chirippusan) is a twin volcano forming the Chirip peninsula which streches NW into the Okhotsk Sea from central Iturup Island, Kurile Island, 230 km north of Hokkaido, Japan.
The 2 stratovolcanoes are Chirip volcano in the N and Bogdan Khmelnitskii to the S. They overly an older volcanic edifice. The lavas erupted from both volcanoes are dominantly basaltic, which is unusual for subduction zone volcanoes.
Only 2 historic eruptions are known. The last eruption in 1860 occurred from a vent SE of the summit of Bogdan Khmelnitskii volcano.

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Chirpoi volcano forms a small island in the central Kurile Islands, Russia. It has a 8-9 km wide partially submerged caldera with several volcanic centers inside the caldera, including active Snow and Cerny volcanoes. The southern caldera rim emerges again on nearby Brat Chirpoey Island 2.5 km SE of Chirpoi.

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Chokai or Chokaisan volcano (鳥海山 Chōkai-san) is the largest volcano of NE Honshu.
It is a massive stratovolcano with a broad conical profile which is why it is called locally Akita-Fuji or Dewa-Fuji. Its height measures from the WNW elongated 15x20 km base about 2000 m.
The volcano is located about 60 km west behind the main volcanic front of the Honshu arc and towers above the Japan Sea.
Chokai consists of 2 overlapping volcanoes, the western and older volcano Nishi-Chokai and the younger eastern volcano Higashi-Chokai, forming the 2 distinct peaks. Historic records of eruptions, mostly phreatic explosions, go back to the 6th century AD.

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Cinnamon Butte is one of a group of 3 young cinder cones long a WNW-ESE line immediately west of the Cascade crest and NE of Diamond Lake in Oregon, USA. The other two cones are Thirsty Point and Kelsay Point.

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Clear Lake volcanic field lies in the northern Coast Ranges, California, ca. 135 km north of San Francisco. The volcanic field consists of lava dome complexes, cinder cones, and maars of basaltic-to-rhyolitic composition. Mount Konocti, a dacitic lava dome on the south shore of Clear Lake, is the largest volcanic feature.
The area has intense gethermal activity, caused by a large, still hot silicic magma chamber about 14 km wide and 7 km beneath the surface. It provides the heat source for the Geysers, the world's largest producing geothermal field on the SW side of the volcanic field. Its geothermal power plants can generate approximately 2000 megawatts, enough to power two cities the size of San Francisco.
The latest volcanic activity happened about 10,000 years ago and formed maars and cinder cones along the shores of Clear Lake, the larges natural freshwater lake in California. Volcanism around Clear Lake is related to the complex San Andreas transform fault system.

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The beautifully symmetrical Mount Cleveland stratovolcano forms the western half of the uninhabited Chuginadak Island in the central Aleutians, connected to the eastern half of the island by a narrow isthmus. It is one of the regions most active volcanoes, but at present has no seismic network. Monitoring of its activity is largely based on satellite observation.

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Coatepeque volcano is a large 7 x 10 km wide caldera 50 km west of San Salvador city. The caldera is elongated in SE-NW direction, with walls rising up to 800 m above the floor in its southwestern part. An up to 120 m deep and 5 km diameter lake occupies the eastern part of the caldera.
Hot springs occur near the lake shores, but there are no certain historical eruptions from Coatepeque.

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Cochiquito is part of a small group of young volcanoes (Cochiquito, Sillanegra and Ranquil del Sur ) north of the town of Buta Ranquil, Argentina, near where the Río Grande and Río Barrancas join to form the Río Colorado.

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Colachi volcano is a stratovolcano in northern Chile. Th youngest lava flows were erupted probably less than 10,000 years ago and cover an area of 7 sq km area on the saddle between Colachi and the neighboring volcano Acamarachi.

Coleman Seamount volcano is a submarine volcano in the western Solomon Islands discovered in 1985 by the Hawaiian "Moana Wave" research vessel during a November 1985 to January 1986 cruise.

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Comondú-La Purísima volcano is a volcanic field of about 9000 sq km in southern Baja California, west of the Sierra de la Giganta.
Volcanic activity of La Purısima dates back about 10 million years ago, but might have continued into the Holocene (i.e. less than 10,000 years ago), as some of the cinder cones and blocky lava flows, in the area between Comondú and the La Purísima river, have preserved a very fresh morphology.

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Concepción volcano is a steep symmetrical stratovolcano with a perfect shape and one of the most active volcanoes of Nicaragua. During the past 100 years, it has been in a near-constant state of small to medium ash explosions at irregular intervals.
Together with its neighbor Madera volcano Concepción forms the NW half of the dumbbell-shaped island of Ometepe in Lake Nicaragua. Both volcanoes are connected by a narrow isthmus.
Frequent explosive eruptions during the past decades have increased the height of its summit significantly (more than 100 m) and outdated the existing topographic maps. Because of the frequent ash eruptions, the upper half of the summit cone lacks vegetation.
The basaltic-to-dacitic Concepción volcano contains a steep-walled 250 m summit crater with a higher western rim. Flank vents are aligned on N-S-trending fractures and contain chains of spatter cones, cinder cones, lava domes, and maars on the NW, NE, SE, and southern sides. Some of these vents are found down to Lake Nicaragua.

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Conchagua volcano (also known as Cochague) is an eroded stratovolcano on the western side of the Gulf of Fonseca in at the southeastern tip of El Salvador.
The main summit of Conchagua is Cerro del Ocote, but the secondary summit Cerro de La Bandera to the ENE of the elongated volcanic edifice seems to be younger.
It is uncertain whether the volcano should be considered still active, but it has certainly not erupted for a long time. There is fumarolic activity on some spots of both peaks.

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Conchagüita volcano at the SE tip of El Salvador forms a small 4-km-wide island in the Gulf of Fonseca separated from Conchagua volcano across a narrow strait.
The volcano is a sharp-topped cone with a 100-m-wide summit crater at the southern end and contains a young lava delta that forms a peninsula on the island's eastern side.
A crescent-shaped crater open to the west is located at the northern end of the island. The only known historic activity from Conchagüita volcano were small ash emissions in 1892.

Cook volcano is an alleged active submarine volcano in the Western Solomons, whose existence is questionable and not accepted by Smithsonian's Global Volcanism database, although it is listed as one of the 4 active volcanoes (Savo, Kavachi, Cook and Tinakula) of the Solomon Islands in the 1957 "Catalogue
of the Active Volcanoes of the World" by Fischer. These
are Savo, Kavachi, Cook and Tinakula. . Possible eruptions of the Cook volcano occurred in 1964 and 1991, and were reported by Australian navy.

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Copahue volcano is an active stratovolcano in central Chile at the border with Argentina. The volcano has a 6.5 x 8.5 km wide caldera with several craters aligned on a 2 km ENE-WSW trending zone.
The eastern summit crater has an acid 300 m wide crater lake known as El Agrio or Del Agrio which has intense hydrothermal activity.
Infrequent mild-to-moderate explosive eruptions occurred in historic time. Eruptions in the last century have ejected pyroclastic rocks and chilled liquid sulfur fragments. The last one was in 2000.

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Copiapo volcano is an andesitic to dacitic stratovolcano in the Atacama province of northern Chile, close to Nevado Tres Cruces National Park and Laguna del Negro Francisco.
Most of the volcano's edifice is several hundreds of thousands to millions years old, and Copiapo might be extinct although there is still solfataric activity.
The volcano contains 8 andesitic cinder cones located primarily on the SE flank. The most recent cone is Volcán San Román 7 km north of Copiapó.

Copra is the dried meat, or kernel, of the coconut.

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Corcovado volcano is an isolated and little studied stratovolcano in southern Chile. Its only known historic activity was in 1834 and/or 1835. C. Darwin described seing it in activity in 1834 and an explosive eruption was reported to have occurred in November 1835 by a resident from Chiloe, 60 km west of the volcano.
Corcovado is ice-covered and basaltic to basaltic-andesite in composition. It has several young (Holocene) cinder cones on its flanks, which are likely the source of its recent eruptions.

Cordón de Puntas Negras is a stratovolcano in northern Chile 46 km SE of Lascar volcano.
The volcano has a number of fresh-looking cones and craters such as Cerros Cenizas, Aguas Calientes, Laguna Escondida, and Chinchilla with well-preserved summit craters and short lava flows. In addition, there is a distinct maar and a large, 13 sq km silicic lava flow and dome complex.
It is thought that some of these vents are less than 10,000 years old, or even historical in age. The youngest of the complex is a crater SE of Cerro Laguna Escondidax.

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Cordón del Azufre is a small volcanic complex on the Argentina/Chile border. The volcano consists of a cluster of lava flows from a row of vents on the NW (Argentinian) side, and a 5 km long chain of vents along the border with Chile.

Note: there is a volcano with a similar name Cerro del Azufre in Northern Chile.

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Coronado volcano is a small stratovolcano in the Gulf of California. It forms a 2 km wide peninsula at the northern tip of Coronado Island, 3 km off the eastern coast of Baja California in the Canal de los Ballenas.
The roughly 440-m-high volcano contains a 300 x 160 m wide crater. Little is known about Volcán Coronado and it is unknown when it last erupted. Fumarolic activity was reported in September 1539.

Nevado Coropuna volcano in southern Peru is the largest and highest active volcano in Peru. It rises majestically 4500 m from the surrounding terrain and forms an 10x20 km E-W elongated complex.
The massive ice-covered complex has at least 6 summit cones. The flanks of the volcano are characterized by deep canyons.
There have been no recorded eruptions and the age of the last eruption is unknown, but there is solfataric activity suggesting that the volcano might still be active.

The small 3.5 x 6 km island of Corvo is located at the NW end of the Azores archipelago.

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Cosigüina (or Cosegüina) volcano in western Nicaragua forms a large peninsula into the Gulf of Fonseca. The last eruption of the volcano was in 1959, but periods of unrest have occurred in recent years and in 1835, it produced the largest known historic eruption in Nicaragua.
The basaltic to andesitic volcano has a concentric structure consisting of the remnants of an large older cone, which collapsed more than 10,000 years ago and left a crescent-shaped somma rim on the outside. In the old caldera, a young cone has been built and is itself truncated by an elliptical 2.4 x 2 km wide and 500 m deep caldera. The young caldera crater contains a beautiful lake.
Most deposits inside the caldera are from lava flows, while ash and pumice layers predominate the outer flanks.

The Coso volcanic field is located east of the Sierra Nevada Range at the western edge of the Basin and Range province, California. It consists of 38 old rhyolitic lava domes and basaltic cinder cones covering a 400 sq km area. volcano is located 200 km north of Los Angeles, California.
Eruptions in this area over the past 4 million years produced 35 km3 of lava, the youngest eruptions are probably from the basaltic Volcano Peak cinder cone and occurred more than 33,000 years ago.
Coso Geothermal System
There is geothermal activity in an ENE trending zone between Sugarloaf Mountain and the Coso Hot Springs. The Coso Hot Springs have fumaroles and intermittently active geysers. Fumaroles at Devils Kitchen and the adjacent Nicol area are located in an explosion crater surrounding a rhyolite lava dome.

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Cotopaxi is one of South America's most famous volcanoes and one of its most active ones. With its 5911 m it also ranks among the world's highest active volcanoes (26th highest).
The majestic, snow covered symmetrical stratovolcano is located on the Eastern Cordillera of the Ecuadorian Andes, 60 km south of Quito and 35 km northeast of Latacunga.
Cotopaxi's steep cone has nested summit craters, the outer of which measures 550 x 800 m in diameter.
Cotopaxi erupted more than 50 times since 1738. The most violent historical eruptions of Cotopaxi volcano were in 1744, 1768, 1877, and 1904. its eruptions often produced pyroclastic flows and destructive mud flows (lahars). Some lahars have travelled more than 100 km and reached the Pacific to the west and the Amazon Basin to the east.
At the moment, it has been dormant for over 70 years, which is an unusual long interval in its recent history.

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A depression often on the top or the flanks of a volcano usually created by explosions of lava from the vent.

Crater Basalt is a volcanic field of 9 cinder cones in the northern Patagonia region of southern Argentina 130 km SE of San Carlos de Bariloche.
The volcanic field covers an area of 700 sq km, and consists of cinder and spatter cones with many overlapping blocky basalt lava flows.

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Crater Lake in the southern Cascade Range of Oregon, USA, is one of the most beautiful calderas in the world. It formed by the collapse of a massive stratovolcano known as Mount Mazama about 6850 years ago. The caldera measures 8x10 km in diameter and is filled with a lake of up to 600 m depth.
A small island, Wizzard Island, is a cinder cone that grew after the formation of the caldera. The caldera is part of Crater Lake National Park.

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Crater Mountain volcano is a curved volcanic chain of 3000 m and higher peaks located in the highlands of New Guinea. The volcanoes are deeply eroded, but there are young flows covering the steep-sided valleys to the north and east, which might be of Holocene age. The easternmost Agotu Valley contains several small craters, cinder cones, and maars.
Crater Mountain is part of the 2700 km2 Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area, known for its spectacular scenery and traditional villages.

The Craters of the Moon are located at the NW end of the largest lava field of the Snake River Plain in Idaho, USA. The volcanic field contains over 60 lava flows, 25 cinder cones up to 250-m high, and 8 eruptive fissure systems, and covers an area of 1600 km2.
The Craters of the Moon formed in 8 eruptive periods each lasting several hundred years, and separated by quiescence intervals of up to 3000 years. The eruptions began about 15,000 years ago, and ended with the most recent (so far) eruptions only 2100 years ago. In contrast to the Craters of the Moon, most other lava fields in the Snake River Plain formed during single, short eruptions.
On average, lava output rate was 1.5 cubic km/1000 years for the period 15,000 to 7,000 years ago and increased to 2.8 cubic km /1000 years for the interval from 7,000 to 2,000 years ago.

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Crow Lagoon is a little-known volcanic center located north of Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada. There are thick layers of basaltic scoria from eruptions less than 10,000 years old.
Crow Lagoon is one of the top 10 volcanoes in Canada with recent seismic activity. The others include: Castle Rock, Mount Edziza volcanic complex, Mount Cayley, Hoodoo Mountain, The Volcano, Mount Silverthrone, Mount Meager, Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic field and Mount Garibaldi.

The outermost layer of the Earth, ranging from about 5 to 65 km in thickness worldwide, composed of plutonic, metamorphic, sedimentary and volcanic rocks.

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The earth's crust is the outermost major layer of the earth, which forms its varied surface both above and under water that we live on. Its thickness ranges from about 10 to 65 km worldwide. The uppermost 15-35 km of crust is brittle enough to produce earthquakes.

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In chemistry, mineralogy, and materials science, a crystal is a solid in which the constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are packed in a regularly ordered, repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions.

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Cu-Lao Re volcano is a group of 4 basaltic sub-aerial and 9 submarine volcanic cones 150 km off the coast of central Vietnam.
3 of the subaerial cones form Cù-Lao Ré Island, and the fourth forms Cù-Lao Bo Bai Island.

Cuernos de Negros (also known as Magaso) is a large stratovolcano complex located in SE Negros Island, Philippines, near the city of Dumaguete. It is unknown when it has erupted after since the last radiocarbon-dated activity about 14,000 years ago. At present, it still has active fumaroles at the highest crater of Magaso, sulphuric springs at the ESE flanks and hot springs on the NE flank.
An increase in fumarolic activity was observed after (and probably triggered by) a major tectonic earthquake in 1902.
The Palinpinon geothermal field is located south of the Okoy River on the north side of the volcano.

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