Latest Volcanology Stories
In a rough-and-tumble wonderland of plunging canyons and towering buttes, some of the still-raw bluffs are lined with soaring, six-sided stone columns so orderly and trim, they could almost pass as relics of a colossal temple. The secret of how these columns, packed in edge to edge, formed en masse from a sea of molten rock is encrypted in details as tiny as the cracks running across their faces. To add to this mystery's allure, decoding it might do more than reveal the life story of some...
Scripps scientists propose mass melting as new force behind volcanic activity in Columbia River region Like a stream of air shooting out of an airplane's broken window to relieve cabin pressure, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego say lava formations in eastern Oregon are the result of an outpouring of magma forced out of a breach in a massive slab of Earth. Their new mechanism explaining how such a large volume of magma was generated is published in the Feb....
New research suggests that eruptions at some of Earth's largest volcanoes could be predicted decades before the event actually occurs, potentially making it easier for experts to monitor danger zones and conduct pre-emptive evacuations to keep residents out of harm's way. In one study, published Thursday in the journal Nature, scientists investigate "caldera-forming volcanic eruptions," or eruptions that discharge such massive amount of magma that it can create a large depression in the...
The Alaska Volcano Observatory raised a warning level for a remote Alaskan volcano on Tuesday, indicating a possible eruption. The center elevated the alert status for Cleveland Volcano after a new lava dome was spotted in the summit crater. Officials said the dome was about 130 feet in diameter as of Monday. The volcano is a 5,675-foot peak on an uninhabited island, 940 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska. Authorities say sudden eruptions could occur at any time, and ash clouds...
In California's Death Valley, death is looking just a bit closer. Geologists have determined that the half-mile-wide Ubehebe Crater, formed by a prehistoric volcanic explosion, was created far more recently than previously thought—and that conditions for a sequel may exist today. Up to now, geologists were vague on the age of the 600-foot deep crater, which formed when a rising plume of magma hit a pocket of underground water, creating an explosion. The most common estimate was about...
How diamond-bearing kimberlites reach the surface Kimberlites are magmatic rocks that form deep in the Earth’s interior and are brought to the surface by volcanic eruptions. On their turbulent journey upwards magmas assimilate other types of minerals, collectively referred to as xenoliths (Greek for “foreign rocks”). The xenoliths found in kimberlite include diamonds, and the vast majority of the diamonds mined in the world today is found in kimberlite ores. Exactly how kimberlites...
Supervolcanoes are one of nature's most destructive forces. In a matter of hours, an eruption from a supervolcano can force thousands of cubic meters of molten rock above ground, and scar landscapes with massive calderas and craters. These catastrophic eruptions have a global impact, and yet scientists still do not fully understand them. Today, a team of scientists studying Bolivia's Uturuncu volcano is trying to shed some light on how supervolcanoes can become so powerful. Uturuncu,...
An airborne radar developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., has returned to Hawaii to continue its study of Kilauea volcano, Hawaii's current most active volcano. The Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar, or UAVSAR, mounted in a pod under NASA's G-III research aircraft from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., returned to Hawaii's Big Island on Jan. 7. The one-week airborne campaign will help scientists better understand processes...
Around 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian geologic period, there was a mass extinction so severe that it remains the most traumatic known species die-off in Earth’s history. Although the cause of this event is a mystery, it has been speculated that the eruption of a large swath of volcanic rock in Russia called the Siberian Traps was a trigger for the extinction. New research from Carnegie’s Linda Elkins-Tanton and her co-authors offers insight into how this volcanism could...
[ Watch the Video ] Cemeteries in ancient Pompeii were “mixed-use developments” with a variety of purposes that included serving as an appropriate site to toss out the trash. That’s according to findings from University of Cincinnati research at Pompeii to be presented Jan. 7, 2012, at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America by UC doctoral student Allison Emmerson. She has worked on site as part of UC’s Pompeii Archaeological Research Project. NEW...
Latest Volcanology Reference Libraries
Wrangell- St. Elias National Park and Preserve is located in the southeastern portion of the American state of Alaska. The park holds 13,175,799 acres of land, divided between the park and preserve, which was once inhabited by Native Americans like the Ahtna and Tlingit peoples. Although Alaska was purchased by the United States in 1867, American citizens did not move into the area until the 1880’s, when gold was discovered in the Yukon Territory. It is thought that George Holt was the...
Lassen Volcanic National Park is located in the northeastern portion of the state of California in the United States. The park contains 106,452 acres of land that was once inhabited by Native Americans, who knew that the park’s main feature, the Lassen Peak volcano, was full of fire and would erupt at some point. Explorers of European ancestry used this peak in the nineteenth century as a landmark while traveling to Sacramento Valley. One of the guides that accompanied the explorers was...
The Amsterdam and Saint-Paul Islands temperate grasslands is an ecoregion including two volcanic islands in the southern Indian Ocean. The French research vessel Marion Dufresne II, which services the Martin-de-Vivies research station on Amsterdam Island, is the only way to visit the islands. There are two volcanoes that lie 83 kilometers from each other in the center of a triangle between Australia, Antarctica and southern Africa called Ile Amsterdam and Ile Saint-Paul. The islands are...
Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park is located in the United States on the island of Hawaiʻi. The park contains 323,431 acres of land, of which half is designated as Hawaii Volcanoes Wilderness, and the distinctive Mauna Loa and Kīlauea volcanoes. Mauna Loa is the world’s largest volcano and Kīlauea is among the world’s most active. The first American visitor to the park was Asa Thurston and the first English visitor was a missionary named William Ellis, both of whom traveled to the...
Haleakalā National Park is located in Hawaii in the United States, on the island of Maui. The park contains 33,265 acres of protected land, with 19,270 acres of designated wilderness. The area was initially added to Hawaii National Park in 1916, alongside the Kilauea and Mauna Loa volcanoes on the island of Hawaii. The creation of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park in 1961 helped established Haleakalā National Park and in 2000, the name of the park was altered to its Hawaiian spelling by the...
