Ecuador owes its dramatic volcanic and seismic activity to the subduction of the Nazca Plate beneath the South American Plate, part of the Andean volcanic belt. The country is crossed by a corridor of towering stratovolcanoes so striking it earned the nickname 'the Avenue of the Volcanoes' from early explorers.
Cotopaxi, one of the highest active volcanoes in the world, and Tungurahua have both erupted in recent decades, while remote Sangay erupts almost continuously. Ecuador also sits on a major subduction zone that produced a magnitude 8.8 earthquake in 1906 and a devastating magnitude 7.8 quake near Muisne in 2016.