The Easter hotspot is a

volcanic A volcano is commonly defined as a vent or fissure in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often fo ...

hotspot located in the southeastern

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

. The hotspot created the Sala y Gómez Ridge which includes

Easter Island Easter Island (, ; , ) is an island and special territory of Chile in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian Triangle in Oceania. The island is renowned for its nearly 1,000 extant monumental statues, ...

, Salas y Gómez Island and the Pukao

Seamount A seamount is a large submarine landform that rises from the ocean floor without reaching the water surface (sea level), and thus is not an island, islet, or cliff-rock. Seamounts are typically formed from extinct volcanoes that rise abruptly a ...

which is at the ridge's young western edge. Easter Island, because of its tectonomagmatic features (low eruptive rate, scattered rift zones, and scarce lateral collapses), represents an end-member type of hotspot volcano in this chain. The hotspot may also be responsible for the formation of the Tuamotu Archipelago,

Line Islands The Line Islands, Teraina Islands or Equatorial Islands () are a chain of 11 atolls (with partly or fully enclosed lagoons, except Vostok and Jarvis) and coral islands (with a surrounding reef) in the central Pacific Ocean, south of the Hawa ...

, and the chain of seamounts lying in between.

References

External links

* Volcanism of Chile Hotspots of the Pacific Ocean Geography of Easter Island {{Volcanology-stub

See also

References

External links