The Taupō Volcanic Zone (TVZ) is a volcanic area in the North Island of New Zealand. It has been active for at least the past two million years and is still highly active. Mount Ruapehu marks its south-western end and the zone runs north-eastward through the Taupō and Rotorua areas and offshore into the Bay of Plenty.

Most New Zealand volcanism in the last 1.6 million years has occurred in the Taupō Volcanic Zone (TVZ). The Kermadec arc extends 1,220 km to the northeast as a series of mainly submarine volcanic centres that lie on, or immediately to the west of, the Kermadec Ridge.

The Taupo Volcanic Zone is named after Lake Taupo, the largest volcano in the zone. It extends some 350 kilometres from Mount Ruapehu and Mount Ngauruhoe at the southwestern tip, through Taupo, Rotorua and to Whakaari (or White Island).

The Taupō Volcanic Zone is extremely active on a world scale: it includes three frequently active cone volcanoes (Ruapehu, Tongariro/Ngauruhoe, Whakaari/White Island), and two of the most productive calderas in the world (Okataina and Taupō).

Taupo was created by subduction of the Pacific Plate below the Australian Plate. The Earth’s crust is stretched and thinned in the entire Taupo Volcanic Zone by movement of the plates. A magma chamber is located between 6 and 8 km below the lake floor. Taupo Volcano began erupting about 300,000 years ago.

2022年10月24日 · The Taupo Volcanic Zone is widening east–west at the rate of about 8 mm per year. It is named after Lake Taupo, the flooded caldera of the largest volcano in the zone, the Taupo Volcano.

Taupo, the most active rhyolitic volcano of the Taupo volcanic zone, is a large, roughly 35-km-wide caldera with poorly defined margins. It is a type example of an "inverse volcano" that slopes inward towards the most recent vent location.

2010年4月9日 · In New Zealand, the Taupō Volcanic Zone (TVZ), extending from Mt Ruapehu through Rotorua to White Island, is the front of a wedge where the Australian and Pacific plates collide. Volcanoes often occur at the boundary where two tectonic plates meet.

The Earth’s crust is unusually thin in the Taupō Volcanic Zone. Magma gets close to the surface – and sometimes breaks through. Every now and then, huge eruptions leave giant holes in the landscape.

The volcano is in the Taupō Volcanic Zone within the Taupō Rift, a region of rift volcanic activity that extends from Ruapehu in the south, through the Taupō and Rotorua districts, to Whakaari / White Island, in the Bay of Plenty. Taupō began erupting about 300,000 years ago.