place

Nicaragua

Country in Central America

Earth & Nature · 20 Oct 2026Two hidden magma sources discovered beneath Nicaragua's Masaya volcano

Scientists at Penn State have uncovered evidence of two previously unrecognized magma sources beneath Nicaragua's active Masaya volcano, a popular tourist destination that sits within 13 miles of roughly 2 million people. The discovery, based on six years of satellite observations and published in Geophysical Research Letters, reveals that the volcano's underground magma system may be considerably more complicated than previously understood, with separate reservoirs behaving in opposite ways.