The Krasheninnikova volcano on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula recently reawakened after more than 400 years of quiescence. The volcano began spilling lava and sending up plumes of ash on the morning of August 3, 2025, according to reports from the Kamchatkan Volcanic Eruption Response Team (KVERT), and has continued erupting ash, volcanic gases, and lava for several months.
On November 14, the OLI-2 (Operational Land Imager-2) on Landsat 9 captured this image of the ongoing activity. A volcanic plume billows from one of Krasheninnikova’s craters and drifts to the northwest. This eruption has lofted plumes several kilometers above the crater rim, leading authorities to keep the aviation color code elevated to orange. A recent lava flow extends to the northeast, contrasting with the snowy slopes.
Krasheninnikova consists of two overlapping stratovolcanoes within a caldera roughly 10 kilometers (6 miles) in diameter. Scientists have dated the eruption that formed the caldera to about 30,000 years ago. The volcano’s most recent previous eruption occurred around the year 1550 and produced lava flows from both summit cones.
Krasheninnikova’s current episode began five days after an 8.8 magnitude earthquake shook the peninsula. The epicenter of the earthquake, one of the strongest recorded by modern seismic instruments, was about 240 kilometers (150 miles) south of the volcano. Scientists think it is possible in certain instances for large earthquakes to trigger activity at nearby volcanoes—provided that they are already primed with enough magma that’s under enough pressure.
Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) used a remote sensing technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) to measure how much the ground in southern Kamchatka shifted after the earthquake. Paul Lundgren, a geophysicist at JPL, is applying the data to analyze the movement of magma in the Krasheninnikova eruption. He noted that InSAR detected surface deformation at the volcano beginning after the quake but before the eruption, likely indicating a dike of magma approaching the surface. “In keeping with a volcano that had not erupted or shown any signs of activity in about 400 years,” he said, “I would consider this eruption as triggered by the magnitude 8.8 earthquake.”
Regardless of the occurrence of a large earthquake, it is common for multiple Kamchatka volcanoes to erupt simultaneously. One of Krasheninnikova’s closest neighbors was among several that were active in recent months. Kronotskaya Sopka (or Kronotsky), visible in the wider view above, erupted briefly on October 4—its first activity in 102 years. The explosive event sent an ash plume 9 kilometers above sea level, according to KVERT. Larger eruptions in the late Pleistocene and early Holocene produced extensive lava flows down its south slopes, which dammed a river and formed Lake Kronotskoye, the peninsula’s largest lake.
NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Lindsey Doermann.
References & Resources
- Global Volcanism Program Krasheninnikov. Accessed November 19, 2025.
- Global Volcanism Program Kronotsky. Accessed November 19, 2025.
- Kamchatka Volcanic Eruption Response Team (2025, November 19) Information Releases. Accessed November 19, 2025.
- NASA Earth Observatory (2025, September 15) Mapping Kamchatka Earthquake Displacement. Accessed November 19, 2025
- NASA Earth Observatory (2025, August 15) Ash Streams from Klyuchevskaya Sopka. Accessed November 19, 2025.
- U.S. Geological Survey (2023, August 18) Can earthquakes trigger volcanic eruptions? Accessed November 19, 2025.
