Soufrière Hills
volcano on Montserrat in the Caribbean
The Soufrière Hills () is an active, complex stratovolcano with many lava domes forming its summit on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom. After a long period of dormancy, the Soufrière Hills volcano became active in 1995 and continued to erupt until 2010. Its last eruption was in 2013. Its eruptions have rendered more than half of Montserrat uninhabitable, destroying the capital city, Plymouth, and causing widespread evacuations: about two-thirds of the population have left the island. Chances Peak in the Soufrière Hills was the highest summit on Montserrat until the mid-1990s, but it has since been eclipsed by various rising and falling volcanic domes during the recent volcanic activity.
The volcano is andesitic in nature, and the current pattern of activity includes periods of lava dome growth, punctuated by brief episodes of dome collapse which result in pyroclastic flows, ash venting, and explosive eruption. The volcano is monitored by the Montserrat Volcano Observatory. Volcanic gas emissions from this volcano are measured by a multi-component gas analyzer system, which detects pre-eruptive degassing of rising magmas, improving prediction of volcanic activity.
The Centre Hills in the central part of the island and the Silver Hills in the north are older volcanic massifs related to the subduction zone. There are three main parts of the island: the central zone, subduction and exclusion.
The public source identifies “Soufrière Hills” as volcano on Montserrat in the Caribbean. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Soufrière, Hills and volcano.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q845239. VIAF identifies the subject as 315141745. The Library of Congress control number is sh2003003395. Authority coordinates are 16.717, -62.183. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1995, 2010 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “Soufrière Hills” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.