Within an hour of Mount St. Helens's eruption in May 1980, Charles Rosenfeld, who had been making airborne observations of the volcano, was on the scene witnessing the event and taking a series of spectacular photographs, many of which appear for the first time in Earthfire. The authors trace the worldwide chains of cause and effect beyond Mount St. Helens, profiling other stratovolcanoes of the Cascade Range in the Pacific Northwest - mountains that have been active and may yet erupt again. They also explore tectonic processes, the Pacific "Ring of Fire," and new research on underwater volcanoes and hot spots.
