Central America's Volcanic Spine

Central America, the narrow isthmus connecting North and South America, is dominated geologically by the Central American Volcanic Arc, a chain of more than 100 volcanoes running roughly 1,500 kilometers from Guatemala through El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica into western Panama. The arc results from the subduction of the Cocos Plate beneath the Caribbean Plate along the Middle America Trench off the Pacific coast, the same tectonic mechanism, on a smaller scale, that produces the Andes further south. Notable active volcanoes include Guatemala's Fuego, which has erupted repeatedly in recent decades, most destructively in June 2018 with a pyroclastic flow that killed more than 200 people in communities near Escuintla; Nicaragua's Momotombo and Concepción; and Costa Rica's Arenal and Poás, the latter home to one of the most acidic crater lakes in the world.