Earth on Fire: The Awesome Power of Volcanic Eruptions, Captured in Pictures (Slideshow)

Photo credit: Bernhard Edmaier

Our planet is a complex, wild, constantly changing system, and sometimes the stuff that's hiding inside the planet, under the Earth's crust, bubbles up (or explodes!) in dramatic volcanic fashion. Photographer Bernhard Edmaier has captured some of the more interesting, fascinating, and scary volcanic eruptions around the globe and collected them in a fabulous forthcoming book.

Here's a sneak peek at Earth on Fire: How Volcanoes Shaped Our Planet by Bernhard Edmaier, text by Angelika Jung-Hüttl, Phaidon 2009 -- a look at geothermal regions in Europe, the Americas, Africa, New Zealand, the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean, including many of the world's well-known volcanoes such as Mount St. Helens in the USA, Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and Krakatoa in Indonesia.