Mount Etna in Sicily, Italy, is an example of a composite volcano. Shield volcanoes do not have such violent eruptions. These volcanoes tend to have gentle slopes and their runnier lava spreads ...

But as a shield volcano, Kilauea doesn’t have explosive, Mt. St. Helens-type eruptions. Instead, it emits a steady stream of fluid lava that generally flows gently down the side of the mountain ...

But why is this happening, and what can it teach us about Earth’s geology? Axial Seamount is a shield volcano, meaning it erupts in a way that spreads lava across a wide area rather than ...