Along the Alpine-Himalaya belt from the Mediterranean Sea to China and the western Pacific Ocean
Mud volcanoes, or cold seeps, are little understood geological features which expel fine-grained clay-like material. Eruptions are often cold or cool, and vary from widely explosive to relatively circumscribed. About 2,000 mud volcanoes have been described to date. Dimitrov, 2002: "Of all known mud volcanoes, more than half (about 650 onshore and at least 470 offshore) can be related to the Alpine-Himalaya active belt." Dimitrov, 2003: "Starting with the Mediterranean Ridge, this mud volcanic belt continues all the way down to the IndonesiaAustralia accretion and collision complexes via Romania and the Black Sea, the Caucasus/Caspian Sea region, Iran, Pakistan, India, and China." In addition, Kopf, 2002, and Dimitrov, 2003: "The western flank of the Pacific Ocean from the Sakhalin Island/Sea of Okhotsk area in the north via Japan, Taiwan, the Marianas, Melanesia, Samoa and Australia to New Zealand in the south holds some 150 onshore volcanoes."
