Lago de Coatepeque fills the 7 x 10 km Coatepeque caldera in western El Salvador. The caldera formed during two major eruptions in the late Pleistocene. Post-caldera eruptions produced a series of lava domes such as the one seen to the left that forms a small peninsula extending into the lake. A chain of scoria cones that erupted along caldera ring faults are across the southern caldera rim in the background.

Photo by Giuseppina Kysar, 1999 (Smithsonian Institution).

This image is made available under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 license terms.

Keywords: caldera

Coatepeque Caldera