Yemen occupies the southwestern corner of the Arabian Plate, right beside the triple junction where the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden rifts meet the East African Rift. This tearing apart of the crust makes the region tectonically active, with rift-related earthquakes and young volcanic fields scattered across the highlands and coast.
Volcanic activity includes the historically active island of Jabal al-Tair in the Red Sea, which erupted in 2007, and the ancient volcanic craters that shape the port city of Aden. Earthquakes such as the deadly 1982 Dhamar event, which destroyed thousands of homes, show that Yemen's slow continental rifting still poses a real seismic hazard.