The Galapagos Rise is a divergent boundary located near the triple junction of the Nazca Plate, the Cocos Plate, and the South American Plate. The volcanically active Galapagos Islands exist on a hotspot above the Galapagos Rise. The Galapagos Microplate is a small separate plate on the rise. In plate tectonics, a divergent boundary (divergent fault boundary or divergent plate boundary) is a linear feature that exists between two tectonic plates where the plates are moving away from each other. ... The Nazca plate is shown in light blue on this map The Nazca Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate in the eastern Pacific Ocean basin off the west coast of South America. ... The Cocos Plate is an oceanic tectonic plate beneath the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of Central America. ... The South American Plate is a continental tectonic plate covering the continent of South America and extending eastward to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. ... This article is about volcanoes in geology. ... NASA Satellite photo of the Galápagos archipelago. ... In geology, a hotspot is a location on the Earths surface that has experienced active vulcanism for a long period of time. ...

The Cocos Ridge trends northeasterly from the Galapagos microplate to the coast of Costa Rica and Panama. The Carnegie Ridge trends almost due east to the Ecuadorian coast.

The Galapagos Rise is a currently active ridge. Fernandina Volcano on Fernandina Island, the most westerly island of the chain erupted on May 12, 2005 ejecting a column of ash that rose to a height of seven km from a fissure on the west side of the volcano. Volcanic ash fell on neighboring Isabela Island. Alcedo Volcano on Isabela Island last erupted in the 1950s. May 12 is the 132nd day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (133rd in leap years). ... 2005 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... A kilometre (American spelling: kilometer, symbol: km) is a unit of length equal to 1000 metres (from the Greek words khilia = thousand and metro = count/measure). ... Millennia: 1st millennium - 2nd millennium - 3rd millennium Events and trends Technology United States tests the first fusion bomb. ...

References

• Galapagos geology - Cornell (http://www.geo.cornell.edu/geology/GalapagosWWW/GalapagosMap.html)
• Nasa Earth Observatory (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/natural_hazards_v2.php3?img_id=12872)