News Excerpt:

Indonesia's Mount Marapi in West Sumatra province erupted.

About the eruption:

• It spewed white-and-grey ash plumes for more than 3,000 meters (about 9,800 feet) into the air, and thus, a three-kilometer (1.9-mile) exclusion zone was announced.
• Mount Marapi, which means 'Mountain of Fire', is the most active volcano on Sumatra island and is nearly 2900 meters high.
• Indonesia is home to about 130 active volcanoes, and Marapi is among these active volcanoes, prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," 
• Ring of Fire is an arc of volcanoes and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin or a belt of tectonic plate boundaries circling the Pacific Ocean where frequent seismic activity occurs.
• The Indonesian archipelago sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, where the meeting of continental plates causes high volcanic and seismic activity.

About Sumatra:

• It is an Indonesian island, the second largest (after Borneo) of the Greater Sunda Islands in the Malay Archipelago.
• It is separated in the northeast from the Malay Peninsula by the Strait of Malacca and in the south from Java by the Sunda Strait.