Volcanoes Educational Posters, Charts & Maps
for the science classroom and home schoolers.

Volcanoes

Volcano Chart

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Volcanoes

Deep inside the Earth, heat and pressure cause solid rock to melt into a liquid known as magma. In some areas around the globe this magma has risen to the surface and erupted, creating volcanoes. Volcanoes are generaly classified into three types: Shield Volcanoes, Composite Cone Volcanoes and Cinder Cones.

Shield volcanoes are broad, domed mountains formed from highly liquid magma flowing and cooling slowly to form rock. As one eruption cools another eruption flows over it, building layers of cooled lava flows. These volcanoes erupt primarily liquid magma, or lava, as it is called once it reaches the Earth's surface.

Composite cone volcanoes are more explosive in nature. The lava fragments are cooled in the air, forming pyroclastic material. The next eruption might be more liquid, thus it has alternating layers of pyroclastic material and lava flows. This type of volcano has much steeper sides.

Cinder cones are primarily built up with pyroclastic material around a central vent. This is common in larger volcanoes.

Geosphere: Rock Cycle

Poster Text: In the rock cycle, rock is neither created nor destroyed, but is continually recycled. Rock changes both physically and chemically, and is redistributed and transformed. Under the crust of the Earth is a circulating layer of liquid molten rock known as magma. When magma cools and solifies underground or above ground it becomes igneous rock. Igneous rock, through heat and pressure can be transformed into metamorphic rock. Once rocks are ... on the surface of the Earth, weather and erosion produce sediment. The sediment is transported and deposited in layers, which undergo compaction to become sedimentary rock. Sedimentary rock can also become exposed to the same process that created it. Some rock becomes magma again through tectonic areas known as subduction zones. It is at these zones that one tectonic plate is pushed down under another....

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Mount Fuji, an active volcano with a low risk of eruption, is the highest point in Japan and a national symbol. The high altitude cloud in this image is called lenticular; they are characteristized by their lens appearance and smooth saucer-like shape.

Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, Africa

Kilimanjaro (Kilima Njaro - Swahili for "shining mountain"), the tallest free-standing mountain rise in the world, is a currently inactive stratovolcano; there are concerns about magma build-up and rapidly retreating glaciers near the summit.

Popocatépetl, "Smoking Mountain", is the 2nd highest peak in Mexico.

Mount Vesuvius

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Mount Rainier, an active stratovolcano, is the highest peak in the Cascade Range.

Did you know that Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, a French Navy officer, observed the only historical eruption of Mount Shasta on September 7, 1786? (Cascade Range, No. California)

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• Lenticual Cloud at Mt. Shasta

Concepcion Volcano and Maderas Volcano form the Isla de Ometepe, Nicaragua, Central America

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The Martian Olympus Mons volcano is the largest volcano in the Solar System and three times higher than Earth's Mount Everest. Because Olympus Mons is also wider than the entire Hawaiian volcano chain, the slopes are not steep. This image is from the Mars Global Surveyor Project, MSSS, JPL, NASA.

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