the Pacific Ring of Fire
From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishthe Pacific Ring of Firethe Pacific Ring of Firean area where many earthquakes and volcanic eruptions take place in the Pacific Ocean. It has a horseshoe shape and is 40,000 kilometres (= 25,000 miles) long. It starts southeast of Australia and curves round past the Philippines and Japan across to the west coast of the US down the length of South America to Chile. → Pacific Ring of Fire