Marion Island, South Africa's only historically active volcano, is seen from the NE with the meteorological station in the foreground. The red scoria cone is the lowest of a NE-trending chain of cones extending from the near the summit of the shield volcano. The meteorological station sits on Pleistocene lava flows. The island includes about 150 scoria cones and coastal tuff cones, most of which formed during the Holocene. The first historical eruption took place in 1980.

Photo by Ian Meiklejohn (University of Pretoria).

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

Galleries: Shield Volcanoes | Scoria Cones

Keywords: scoria cone | shield volcano

Marion Island