The
Northern Cordilleran Volcanic Province (
NCVP), formerly known as the
Stikine Volcanic Belt, is a
geologic province defined by the occurrence of Miocene to Holocene
volcanoes in the
Pacific Northwest of
North America. This belt of volcanoes extends roughly north-northwest from northwestern
British Columbia and the
Alaska Panhandle through
Yukon to the
Southeast Fairbanks Census Area of far eastern
Alaska, in a corridor hundreds of kilometres wide. It is the most recently defined volcanic province in the
Western Cordillera. It has formed due to
extensional cracking of the North American continent—similar to other on-land extensional volcanic zones, including the
Basin and Range Province and the
East African Rift. Although taking its name from the Western Cordillera, this term is a geologic grouping rather than a geographic one. The southmost part of the NCVP has more, and larger, volcanoes than does the rest of the NCVP; further north it is less clearly delineated, describing a large arch that sways westward through central Yukon.