Kikai is a mostly submerged 19-km-wide caldera S of Kyushu that was the source of one of the world's largest Holocene eruptions about 6,300 years ago. Pyroclastic flows traveled across the sea for a total distance of 100 km and devastated southern and central Kyushu. This view from near the summit of the post-caldera Iwodake cone shows the W rim of Kikai caldera forming the peninsula (upper left) behind the Inamuradake scoria cone.

Photo by Yasuo Miyabuchi, 1996 (Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, Kyushu).

This image is made available under the Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 license terms.

Keywords: caldera | scoria cone

Kikai