Do volcanoes, mountains, and earthquakes have anything in common?
Volcanoes & earthquakes have a fairly common pattern of occurence; their presence being very largely coincident with the earth’s plate boundaries (see wikipedia reference below). Where there is a current continental plate on continental plate collision, as with the Himalayas, one find earthquakes as a result of two plates moving relative to each other but you do not find volcanoes because the crustal thickness there is two great and there is no oceanic crust subducting (sinking) beneath these mountains. The Himalayas have, of course the highest mountains in the world, but I will deal with mountains below. Introducing mountains into the question makes things more complicated however. There are many mountain ranges in the world e.g the Drakensburgs on the Lesotho – Natal border of southern Africa, the Urals in Russia and the Highlands of Scotland, UK that have NOTHING to do with current volcanic and / or earthquake activity. However, that is not the end of this subject. The Plate Tectoni
