Popocatepetl

Popocatepetl rises between the states of Puebla, Morelos and Mexico in central Mexico, about 70 kilometers southeast of Mexico City within the eastern half of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, and at 5,393 meters is the second-highest peak in Mexico after Pico de Orizaba. It is an active stratovolcano with a steep-walled crater about 400 by 600 meters wide, built from historically andesitic lava with more recent eruptions producing dacite and andesitic-dacitic magma mixtures. Paleomagnetic studies date the volcano to roughly 730,000 years old, its current cone the successor to earlier ancestral cones known as Nexpayantla and El Fraile. It has produced three major Plinian eruptions since the mid-Holocene, the most recent around the year 800, and after roughly half a century of dormancy in the 20th century it has remained continuously active since 1993. This entity documents Popocatepetl specifically as a geological formation, an active andesitic-dacitic stratovolcano continuously active since 1993 after decades of dormancy.