Question: Is there any chance of the chilean volcano Sollipulli to errupt scince it hasn't erupted scince the last 700 years?

David Pyle answered on 18 Mar 2011:

Yes, of course. The ‘typical’ lifetime of a stratovolcano, like Sollipulli, is probably at least 250,000 to 500,000 years. So an eruption just 700 years ago means that it is very much ‘live’, even if it is in a completely ‘dormant’ stage. There’s no agreement on how long you need to wait after the last eruption before declaring a volcano extinct – but it would probably be at least something like tens of thousands of years. This is not true of all volcanoes – some little cones only ever erupt once; but they tend to ‘live’ in fields – so the field remains active, even if the cones are extinct.