On the Pacific margin
The Ring of Fire, in ordinary language, is the belt of earthquakes and volcanoes around the Pacific plate. USGS describes that belt that way in its earthquake-facts notes. This site draws the belt as a set of lat/lon rectangles, documented on the About page, because a rectangle can be audited. A rectangle is not a fault trace.
- Cascadia subduction zone — Juan de Fuca plate under North America, including the 26 January 1700 earthquake.
- San Andreas fault system — a transform boundary in California, not a subduction zone.
- Japan Trench — includes the 2011 M9.1 Tohoku earthquake on the USGS list.
- Chile and the South American margin — includes the 1960 M9.5 Valdivia earthquake, the largest on that USGS list.
- Alaska and the Aleutians — includes the 1964 M9.2 earthquake and several Aleutian events.
- Kamchatka and the Kurils — the 1952 M9.0 earthquake and the Kuril event on the same USGS list.
- Sumatra and the Sunda margin — the 2004 M9.1 earthquake and the other Sunda events on that list.
- Peru and the northern Andes — the 2001 M8.4 Arequipa earthquake and the 1906 Ecuador–Colombia earthquake.
The full USGS ranking, including two events that do not have their own region page, is on the 20 largest earthquakes since 1900.
Not on the Ring of Fire
The New Madrid seismic zone is in the central United States. USGS describes the 1811–1812 sequence there. None of our Pacific rectangles contain it. It is here so a search for “New Madrid” does not get mixed up with a plate boundary.
Volcanoes are a different layer
Arc volcanoes sit above subduction zones, but a volcano coordinate is not an earthquake epicenter. Profiles for Mount St. Helens, Fujisan, Villarrica, Shishaldin, and others are linked from the region pages. Hawaiʻi is a hotspot and is outside the rectangles.