The most common image of a volcano is that of a conical mountain that has a crater at its summit that spews poisonous gases and lava. However, this only talks about one kind of volcano. Volcanoes have much more intricate characteristics, and their structure and behavior are influenced by numerous factors. Instead of a summit crater, lava domes form some volcanoes’ rugged peaks, while others have massive plateaus as landscape features. Smaller cones like Puu, which can be found on a flank of Kalauea in Hawaii, can be formed by vents that release volcanic material like lava and ash as well as gases like steam and magmatic gases.

Cryovolcanoes, also known as ice volcanoes, are another type of volcano, especially on some of Jupiter’s, Saturn’s, and Neptune’s moons. mud volcanoes, which are formations that are frequently unrelated to known magmatic activity, and Dynamic mud volcanoes will generally include temperatures much lower than those of molten volcanoes with the exception of when the mud fountain of liquid magma is really a vent of a molten spring of gushing lava.

The eruption of low-viscosity lava that can flow a great distance from a vent results in the formation of shield volcanoes, which get their name from their broad, shield-like profiles. They are typically characterized by relatively mild effusive eruptions rather than a catastrophic explosion. Shield volcanoes are more prevalent in oceanic regions than on continental ones because low-viscosity magma typically contains little silica. Shield cones, which are also common in Iceland, make up the Hawaiian volcanic chain.