Payún Matru volcano (3600 m), La Payunia Nature Reserve, Malargüe, Mendoza, Argentina. The different colours are due to varying types of volcanic soil, since all of Earth's volcano types are represented in this area.
A volcano is an opening, or rupture, in a planet's surface or crust, which allows hot magma, volcanic ash and gases to escape from below the surface.
Volcanoes are generally found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging. A mid-oceanic ridge, for example the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has examples of volcanoes caused by divergent tectonic plates pulling apart; the Pacific Ring of Fire has examples of volcanoes caused by convergent tectonic plates coming together. By contrast, volcanoes are usually not created where two tectonic plates slide past one another. Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching and thinning of the Earth's crust in the interiors of plates, e.g., in the East African Rift, the Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic field and the Rio Grande Rift in North America. This type of volcanism falls under the umbrella of "Plate hypothesis" volcanism. Volcanism away from plate boundaries has also been explained as mantle plumes. These so-called "hotspots", for example Hawaii, are postulated to arise from upwelling diapirs with magma from the core-mantle boundary, 3,000 km deep in the Earth.
Payun Matru is a shield volcano in Argentina, located in the Reserva Provincial La Payunia of the Malargüe Department, to the south of the Mendoza Province.
Volcan Payun is notable for large crystals of hematite pseudomorphs after magnetite, of volcanic fumarole origin.
South America (Spanish: América del Sur, Sudamérica, or Suramérica; Portuguese: América do Sul; Quechua and Aymara: Urin Awya Yala; Guarani: Ñembyamérika; Dutch: Zuid-Amerika; French: Amérique du Sud) is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east by the Atlantic Ocean; North America and the Caribbean Sea lie to the northwest. It includes twelve independent countries—Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela—and French Guiana, which is an overseas region of France. The South American countries that border the Caribbean Sea—Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana—are also known as Caribbean South America.
Argentina i/ˌɑrdʒənˈtiːnə/, officially the Argentine Republic (Spanish: República Argentina, pronounced: [re̞ˈpuβlika arxe̞nˈtina]), is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires. It is the eighth-largest country in the world by land area and the largest among Spanish-speaking nations.
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