Mount Nyiragongo

Mount Nyiragongo is a stratovolcano in the Virunga Mountains of North Kivu province, Democratic Republic of the Congo, about 12 kilometers north of the city of Goma and just under 10 kilometers from the Rwandan border, rising to 3,470 meters. It formed through volcanism along the Albertine Rift and overlaps two older volcanic structures, Baruta and Shaheru. Its main crater, about 2 kilometers wide, typically holds an active lava lake; before 1977 the lake sat around 600 meters deep, though the 2002 eruption drained it to roughly 900 meters below the rim. Nyiragongo's lava is unusually low in silica and rich in alkali, ultramafic minerals, giving it extreme fluidity that lets flows race downhill at up to 100 kilometers per hour, a major hazard to nearby communities. The volcano has erupted at least 34 times since 1882, and together with neighboring Nyamuragira accounts for about 40 percent of Africa's historical volcanic eruptions. This entity documents Mount Nyiragongo specifically as a geological formation, a rift-zone stratovolcano whose unusually fluid lava lake has repeatedly threatened nearby communities.