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Guinobatan Journal

A Volcano Known for Its Beauty Is Also a Killer

By Jes Aznar and Russell Goldman

• Jan. 25, 2018

GUINOBATAN, Philippines — Mount Mayon, one of the Philippines’ most active volcanoes, is as renowned for its beauty as it is feared for its destructiveness.

Admired for its symmetry and classic cone shape, the volcano was named for a mythological fairy. But its smooth slopes and cute name belie its deadly nature: Inside is an enormous chamber, churning with molten rock and toxic gas.

And it is ready to blow.

For two weeks Mayon has rumbled, belched plumes of ash and smoke and lit up the night sky with an eerie orange glow.

“It is very hard to sleep at night when you start to hear the explosions,” said Ed Esquivel, 60, a retired police inspector from the village of Bogna, five miles from the crater. “It is like five big airplanes flying around the village.”

A source of pride for the residents of Albay Province on Luzon Island, who rely on its rich soil and tourist dollars, the volcano has recently been upending life here instead. More than 70,000 people had been forced from their homes by Thursday, one of the largest mass evacuations on the island in recent years.

Mr. Esquivel is among the dozens who have ignored the government’s warnings, brushing off the soldiers deployed to take him and his neighbors to shelters several miles away. He has chosen instead to remain at home, keeping an eye on his property and livestock.

It is not out of ignorance that Mr. Esquivel remains. He knows Mayon’s fatal power all too well.

“I’ll always remember the day my father died, on Feb. 2, 1993,” Mr. Esquivel said. “He was among the 73 who died when Mayon erupted while they worked their farms at the foot of the volcano.”

The farmers were killed by a pyroclastic cloud, a wall of superheated gas that can barrel down the sides of a volcano at speeds up to 430 miles per hour, and at temperatures exceeding 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology said that similar pyroclastic flows, tremors and streams of lava had all been detected several times on Thursday. Measurements taken by satellite, it said, indicated that the mountain’s surface had swelled, increasing the likelihood of a major eruption.

The authorities urged residents this week to remain indoors and wear masks. Officials scrambled to establish more than 60 shelters for the growing number of displaced people. Dozens of flights have been canceled, and schools outside the danger zone have set up makeshift classrooms for evacuated children.

“It’s a logistical nightmare,” Claudio Yucot, the regional director for the Office of Civil Defense, told reporters.

But at the base of the mountain, life seems strangely normal — tranquil, even.

Henry Adra, 57, sat outside his hut in the village of Matnog, four miles from the mountain’s peak, surrounded by a grove of fruit trees. The singing of birds and rustling of leaves were interrupted only by the volcano’s rumblings.

Mr. Adra said he had no intention of leaving. He has survived eight eruptions since 1968, and is inured so thoroughly to the volcano’s mood swings that during the last eruption he ran for a closer look at boulders tumbling down the mountain’s side.

“Continue working,” he advised his neighbors. “Evacuate only when you already see the lava flowing to you.”

Mayon has erupted about 50 times in the past 500 years, killing scores of people. Most recently, five climbers were killed in 2013 when they were asphyxiated by ash near the summit.

Despite the terrors posed by pyroclastic clouds and red hot lava, Mr. Adra said there were some things he feared more than the mountain, which has nurtured his family’s fields and trees for generations.

“I am much more afraid of my wife,” he said, “than Mayon erupting.”

Jes Aznar reported from Guinobatan, and Russell Goldman from Hong Kong.

The Volcanologist’s Paradox

Studying powerful eruptions means witnessing beauty and tragedy in the same moment.

On March 16, 2017, Mount Etna almost killed Boris Behncke. He was on the volcano’s snow-covered flanks, accompanying a film crew from the BBC. Serpents of lava were slithering out of a southeastern crater, but Behncke , a volcanologist at Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, felt no need to take his hard hat out of his bag. They were more than a mile away from the crater, seemingly far from harm’s reach.

Suddenly, flashes of steam erupted from the ice—lava had snuck into the snowbank and was violently vaporizing it, launching red-hot debris into the air. Everyone bolted downslope; some were knocked off their feet by the blasts, others pelted by a Hadean hail of volcanic rock. A small, scorching-hot chunk of matter shot at Behncke, careening through his backpack like a bullet through Jell-O. That he had not whipped out his hard hat proved oddly fortunate: If he had put it on his head, that volcanic shard would have sliced through his abdomen.

That day, Behncke thinks, “haunted all of us for a while,” he told me. But the same evening, he watched the eruption unfold on TV and said to himself: “This is beautiful. It’s spectacular!”

This is the volcanologist’s emotional paradox. Eruptions “are very spectacular. I do admire them,” Behncke, who lives on Etna’s slopes, 13 miles from the summit, told me. “But we are things in their way.”

Roughly 40 volcanoes are erupting on Earth at any given moment. Most do so harmlessly. Some cause great devastation. Right now, lava is cascading out of the Cumbre Vieja volcano, on the Spanish island of La Palma , and every day lives are upturned and homes are lost.

Somewhat perversely, this ongoing destruction is accompanied by a kaleidoscope of aesthetic wonders: Incandescent ink, with hues of crimson and burnt orange, pours into the cerulean sea; streaks of purple lightning dance around skyscraper-high lava fountains; curtains of molten rock spill out of a newborn lithic coliseum, creating the youngest land on Earth.

When volcanologists watch eruptions like this, the boundary between awe and horror “is a very narrow edge,” Behncke said.

Some eruptions tip easily over that edge, in one direction or the other . The 1985 eruption of Colombia’s Nevado del Ruiz volcano, for example, triggered mudflows that killed 23,000 and still haunts many volcanologists to this day. “There was nothing beautiful there,” Behncke told me. In contrast, this past March, the first eruption in 800 years on Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula was forecast well in advance, fully expected to be nonexplosive and nonthreatening, and seemed likely to be confined to uninhabited valleys. Locals and volcanologists alike greeted it with wonderment, and the baby volcano—which had built itself from scratch from a series of lava-spewing fissures—was soon the backdrop to gigs, wedding proposals, and impromptu lava-fueled cooking; researchers had countless chances to conduct cutting-edge science.

But between these two endpoints are dangerous eruptions, the most deleterious effects of which can be curtailed through forensic examination of a volcano’s history, scientific documentation of eruptions in real time, and monitoring by an array of technologies. No amount of preparation, though, prevents all harm. There is often some degree of loss—of communities, livelihoods, or lives—and managing and studying these active volcanoes during their outbursts can bring up a mélange of emotions.

Take Cumbre Vieja. Since it started erupting on September 19, its first outpouring after a half-century interregnum , the southwestern corner of La Palma has been invaded by molten rock. Hundreds of homes and plenty of farmland have been annihilated, but careful monitoring and preemptive mandatory evacuation orders have so far prevented any fatalities. Similarly, when Hawaii’s Kīlauea volcano expelled 320,000 Olympic-size swimming pools’ worth of lava from fresh wounds in its eastern flank in the spring and summer of 2018, it destroyed more than 700 homes, but thanks to the work of scientists and the authorities, no one perished. No volcanologist would disagree that Kīlauea’s outburst, like the eruption at La Palma, was ruinous. But it was the first time that many volcanologists who made it to Hawaii had seen lava up close—and it granted them an otherworldly, often breathtaking experience .

At the time, Emily Mason was a doctoral student of volcanology at the University of Cambridge, and her visits to the rivers and fountains of molten rock gushing from Kīlauea’s eighth fissure—by that stage, the focal point of the eruption—gave her an emphatic introduction to the double-sided emotion an eruption can raise. “When you’re stood in front of something as phenomenal as the lava flows coming out of fissure eight … it was like a river rapid, a torrent of lava … It’s hard to think of anything else, despite the fact that you’re acutely aware that you’re probably standing on top of someone’s house that’s been buried,” she told me. “It’s very surreal.” Jessica Ball , a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s California Volcano Observatory, felt much the same way. “I had a moment where I just stopped and said: ‘I can’t believe I’m seeing this,’” she told me. “It’s incredible; it’s dangerous. And you’re standing in the middle of this apocalyptic-looking neighborhood.”

At the same time, the eruption presented researchers with a bounty of volcanological treasure: a chance to listen to a seismic soundtrack to determine changes in upcoming explosivity; an opportunity to see how this giant volcano’s dramatically deflating summit forced lava out of its flanks; a front-row seat to a massive, lava-spewing eruption that made future effusive eruptions more forecastable around the world. To be able to conduct so much revelatory research was unquestionably thrilling.

These more positive emotions can sit uneasily with volcanologists. But it isn’t difficult to see where their involuntary astonishment comes from. “There is this sense of us waiting for these eruptions with bated breath,” Mason said. “We’re so excited for when they do actually happen that it is easy, momentarily, to forget how devastating they are.”

“Scientists like to sometimes divorce themselves from emotions, but it’s impossible to do that,” Ball told me. “This is your career; this is what you’ve worked toward all your life, and suddenly it’s in front of you.”

For Richie Robertson , a volcanologist at the University of the West Indies, this notion of waiting a lifetime for an idiosyncratic fireworks show is especially apt. La Soufrière, on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, blew its top in 1979—when Robertson was in his senior year of high school. He decided to become a volcanologist after noticing that none of the scientists dealing with the response hailed from St. Vincent and thinking, as he recalls: “How is it we, as people in St. Vincent, don’t have anybody here who knows enough about the volcano?”

In December 2020, a toothpaste-like slurry of lava began to ooze from La Soufrière’s peak, and the following April, a seismic cacophony and a hyperventilating summit suggested that an explosive eruption was incoming. An evacuation was ordered on April 8—and the booms began the very next day. After it became clear that the evacuation had prevented a loss of life, Robertson’s initial nerves faded somewhat, and he could not help but marvel. “Those mushrooming clouds going up in the air and expanding, and looking like they’re alive, and at night you see lightning flashing and you can see the pyroclastic flows snaking in the valleys—all of that is spectacular to see,” he told me. The volcano is far quieter today, but he remains in awe of La Soufrière. “It’s still as majestic and dangerous and interesting as it ever was—perhaps even more so now.”

The unyielding power of eruptions, which affect every single sense, gives volcanoes a somewhat deific status. They are akin to giant, primordial, tempestuous beasts. As they go about their business, hissing and writhing, they remain “impervious to the lifetimes of humans,” says Ailsa Naismith , a volcanologist at the University of Bristol. And, like the gods of old, they seem omnipotent: They make new land, tinker with the atmosphere, incubate life , and, sometimes, trigger biocidal cataclysms .

Eruptions “show that the planet is alive,” Stavros Meletlidis , a volcanologist at Spain’s National Geographic Institute, told me. They are the outward expression of a planet’s healthy geologic heartbeat. It is only human to be moved by their presence .

Yet, especially in the early days of an eruption, as emotions seesaw between awe and lamentation , the danger that volcanoes pose can exert a stronger pull. Meletlidis, who has been monitoring and responding to the eruption on La Palma, understands that the fountains and rivers of lava appear beguiling from a distance. But conditions on the ground have become a litany of desolation. He went to visit a friend one recent Saturday; the next day, lava bulldozed through his friend’s house. “Right now, we’re in an emergency, and we should treat it like an emergency,” he told me.

This attitude, shared by many of his peers, seems to stem at least in part from his own origin story. Many were inspired to become volcanologists by the lethal eruption of America’s Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980, whose jaw-dropping dimensions and astounding ferocity shocked the nation. Meletlidis was 15 years old and living in Greece. In the pre-internet age, he first saw the scale of the devastation in an issue of National Geographic .

As he surveyed the images of the eruption-sterilized landscape, he became enamored of the scientists who gave everything—including, in that case, their lives —trying to monitor the convulsing volcano and provide lifesaving data to the public. That’s when he decided to join their ranks and do his best to outsmart these godlike, lithic entities.

At the moment, Meletlidis is trying to outmaneuver Cumbre Vieja. Any thought of exciting scientific advances will wait. “People are more important than the eruption,” he said. Eruptions, he told me, can be hypnotizing, enchanting, and spectacular—but right now, when he looks at those streams of molten rock eroding and demolishing neighborhoods, all he sees is a calamity.

Geology Makes the Mayon Volcano Visually Spectacular—And Dangerously Explosive

What’s going on inside one of the Philippines’ most active volcanoes?

Maya Wei-Haas

Last weekend, the Philippines' most active—and attractive—volcano, Mount Mayon, roared back to life. The 8,070-foot volcano began releasing spurts of incandescent molten rock and spewing clouds of smoke and ash into the sky, causing over 30,000 local residents to evacuate the region. By the morning of January 18, the gooey streams of lava had traveled almost two miles from the summit.

Though the images of Mount Mayon are startling, the volcano isn’t truly explosive—yet. The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVolcs), which monitors the numerous volcanoes of the island chain, has set the current warning level at a 3 out of 5, which means that there is " relatively high unrest ." At this point, explosive eruption is not imminent, says Janine Krippner , a volcanologist and postdoctoral researcher researcher at Concord University. If the trend continues, however, an eruption is possible in the next few weeks.

Located on the large island of Luzon, Mount Mayon is known for its dramatically sloped edges and picturesque symmetry, which makes it a popular tourist attraction; some climbers even  attempt to the venture to its smouldering rim. "It's gorgeous, isn't it?" marvels Krippner. But that beauty isn’t entirely innocuous. In fact, Krippner explains, the structure’s symmetrical form is partly due to the frequency of the volcano's eruptions.

"Mayon is one of the most active volcanoes—if not the most active volcano—in the Philippines, so it has the chance to keep building its profile up without eroding away," she says. Since its first recorded eruption in 1616, there have been roughly 58 known events —four in just the last decade—which have ranged from small sputters to full-on disasters. Its most explosive eruption took place in 1814, when columns of ash rose miles high, devastated nearby towns and killed 1200 people.  

Many of these eruptions are strombolian , which means the cone emits a stuttering spray of molten rock that collects around its upper rim. (Strombolian eruptions are among the less-explosive types of blasts, but Mayon is capable of much more violent eruptions as well.) Over time, these volcanic rocks "stack up, and up, and up," says Krippner, creating extremely steep slope. That’s why, near the top of the volcano, its sides veer at angles up to 40 degrees—roughly twice the angle of the famous Baldwin street in New Zealand, one of the steepest roads in the world.

17 January 2018 Mayon Volcano aerial photos pic.twitter.com/0bUUEzgbGL — PHIVOLCS-DOST (@phivolcs_dost) January 18, 2018

So why, exactly, does Mayon have so many fiery fits? It’s all about location.

The islands of the Philippines are situated along the  Ring of Fire , a curving chain of volcanism that hugs the boundary of the Pacific Ocean and contains three-fourths of all the world's volcanoes. What drives this region of fiery activity are slow-motion collisions between the shifting blocks of Earth's crust, or tectonic plates, which have been taking place over millions of years. The situation in the Philippines is in particularly  complex , explains  Ben Andrews , director of Smithsonian's Global Volcanism Program. "It's a place where we have a whole bunch of different subduction zones of different ages that are sort of piling together and crashing together," he says. "It gets pretty hairy."

As one plate thrusts beneath another, the rocks begin to melt, fueling the volcanic eruption above. Depending on the composition of the melting rock, the lava can be thin and runny, or thick and viscous. This viscosity paired with the speed at which the magma rises determines the volcano's explosivity, says Andrews: The thicker and quicker the lava, the more explosive the blast. Mayon produces magma of intermediate composition and viscosity, but it differs from eruption to eruption.

Think of a volcanic eruption like opening a shaken bottle of soda, says Andrews. If you pop off the cap immediately, you're in for a spray of sugary carbonated liquid to the face, just like the sudden release of gas and molten rock that builds under a plug of viscous magma. But if you slow down and let a little air out first—like the gases that can escape from liquid-y magma—a violent explosion is less likely.

News outlets have been reporting on an “imminent explosion,” warning that Mayon will erupt within days. But given its activity so far, it’s not yet clear if, or when, Mayon will erupt.  Volcanoes are extremely hard to predict as the magma is constantly changing, says Krippner.

Since the volcano began belching, small pyroclastic flows—avalanches of hot rocks, ash and gas—have also tumbled down its flanks. Though dangerous, these pyroclastic flows have the potential to be much more devastating. Previously at Mayon, says Krippner, these flows have been clocked in at over 60 meters per second. "They're extremely fast and they're extremely hot," she says. "They destroy pretty much everything in their path."

If the eruption continues, one of the biggest dangers is an explosive blast, which could produce a column of volcanic ash miles high. The collapse of this column can send massive, deadly pyroclastic flows racing down the volcano's flanks. The last time Mayon burst in an explosive eruption was in 2001. With a  roar like a jet plane , the volcano shot clouds of ash and molten rock just over  six miles into the sky .

Also of concern is the potential for what are known as lahars, or flows of debris. The volcanic rumblings have been actively producing volcanic ash, a material that’s more like sand than the kind of ash you see when you burn wood or paper, notes Krippner.  A strong rain—as is frequent on these tropical islands—is all that’s needed to turn these layers of debris into a slurry and send it careening down the volcano's slopes, sweeping with it anything that gets in its way. Mayon's steep sides make it particularly susceptible to these mudflows.

Residents suffered the full potential for destruction of Mayon's lahars in  November of 2006  when a typhoon swept the region, bringing with it heavy rain that saturated built up material. A massive lahar formed, destroying nearby towns and killing  1,266  people.

Both Krippner and Andrews stress that local residents are in good hands under PHIVolcs' careful watch. The researchers have installed a complex network of sensors that monitor Mayon's every tremble and burp and are using their vast amounts of knowledge garnered from past events to interpret the volcano’s every shiver.

And as Krippner notes, "it's still got two more levels to go." If PHIVoics raises the alert level to a 4 or 5, she says, "that could mean something bigger is coming."

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Maya Wei-Haas | | READ MORE

Maya Wei-Haas is a freelance science writer who specializes in geology of Earth and beyond. Her work has been featured in  National Geographic, News from Science,  and   AGU’s  EOS.

Essays About Volcanoes: Top 5 Examples and 10 Prompts

Do you need to write essays about volcanoes but don’t know where to start? Check out our top essay examples and prompts to help you write a high-quality essay.

Considered the planet’s geologic architects, volcanoes are responsible for more than 80% of the Earth’s surface . The mountains, craters, and fertile soil from these eruptions give way to the very foundation of life itself, making it possible for humans to survive and thrive.  

Aside from the numerous ocean floor volcanoes, there are 161 active volcanoes in the US . However, these beautiful and unique landforms can instantly turn into a nightmare, like Mt. Tambora in Indonesia, which killed 92,000 people in 1815 .

Various writings are critical to understanding these openings in the Earth’s crust, especially for students studying volcanoes. It can be tricky to write this topic and will require a lot of research to ensure all the information gathered is accurate. 

To help you, read on to see our top essay examples and writing prompts to help you begin writing.

Top 5 Essay Examples

1. short essay on volcanoes by prasad nanda , 2. types of volcanoes by reena a , 3. shield volcano, one of the volcano types by anonymous on gradesfixer.com, 4. benefits and problems caused by volcanoes by anonymous on newyorkessays.com, 5. volcanoes paper by vanessa strickland, 1. volcanoes and their classifications, 2. a dormant volcano’s eruption, 3. volcanic eruptions in the movies, 4. the supervolcano: what is it, 5. the word’s ring of fire, 6. what is a lahar, 7. why does a volcano erupt, 8. my experience with volcanic eruptions, 9. effects of volcanic eruptions, 10. what to do during volcanic disasters.

“The name, “volcano” originates from the name Vulcan, a god of fire in Roman mythology.”

Nanda briefly defines volcanoes, stating they help release hot pressure that builds up deep within the planet. Then, he discusses each volcano classification, including lava and magma’s roles during a volcanic eruption. Besides interesting facts about volcanoes (like the Ojos del Salado as the world’s tallest volcano), Nanda talks about volcanic eruptions’ havoc. However, he also lays down their benefits, such as cooled magma turning to rich soil for crop cultivation.

“The size, style, and frequency of eruptions can differ greatly but all these elements are correlated to the shape of a volcano.”

In this essay, Reena identifies the three main types of volcanoes and compares them by shape, eruption style, and magma type and temperature. A shield volcano is a broad, flat domelike volcano with basaltic magma and gentle eruptions. The strato or composite volcano is the most violent because its explosive eruption results in a lava flow, pyroclastic flows, and lahar. Reena shares that a caldera volcano is rare and has sticky and cool lava, but it’s the most dangerous type. To make it easier for the readers to understand her essay, she adds figures describing the process of volcanic eruptions.

“All in all, shield volcanoes are the nicest of the three but don’t be fooled, it can still do damage.”

As the essay’s title suggests, the author focuses on the most prominent type of volcano with shallow slopes – the shield volcano. Countries like Iceland, New Zealand, and the US have this type of volcano, but it’s usually in the oceans, like the Mauna Loa in the Hawaiian Islands. Also, apart from its shape and magma type, a shield volcano has regular but calmer eruptions until water enters its vents.

“Volcanic eruptions bring both positive and negative impacts to man.”

The essay delves into the different conditions of volcanic eruptions, including their effects on a country and its people. Besides destroying crops, animals, and lives, they damage the economy and environment. However, these misfortunes also leave behind treasures, such as fertile soil from ash, minerals like copper, gold, and silver from magma, and clean and unlimited geothermal energy. After these incidents, a place’s historic eruptions also boost its tourism.

“Beautiful and powerful, awe-inspiring and deadly, they are spectacular reminders of the dynamic forces that shape our planet.”

Strickland’s essay centers on volcanic formations, types, and studies, specifically Krakatoa’s eruption in 1883. She explains that when two plates hit each other, the Earth melts rocks into magma and gases, forming a volcano. Strickland also mentions the pros and cons of living near a volcanic island. For example, even though a tsunami is possible, these islands are rich in marine life, giving fishermen a good living.

Are you looking for more topics like this? Check out our round-up of essay topics about nature .

10 Writing Prompts For Essays About Volcanoes

Do you need more inspiration for your essay? See our best essay prompts about volcanoes below:

Identify and discuss the three classifications of volcanoes according to how often they erupt: active, dormant or inactive, and extinct. Find the similarities and differences of each variety and give examples. At the end of your essay, tell your readers which volcano is the most dangerous and why.

Volcanoes that have not erupted for a very long time are considered inactive or dormant, but they can erupt anytime in the future. For this essay, look for an inactive volcano that suddenly woke up after years of sleeping. Then, find the cause of its sudden eruption and add the extent of its damage. To make your piece more interesting, include an interview with people living near dormant volcanoes and share their thoughts on the possibility of them exploding anytime.

Choose an on-screen depiction of how volcanoes work, like the documentary “ Krakatoa: Volcano of Destruction .” Next, briefly summarize the movie, then comment on how realistic the film’s effects, scenes, and dialogues are. Finally, conclude your essay by debating the characters’ decisions to save themselves.

The Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) criteria interpret danger based on intensity and magnitude. Explain how this scale recognizes a supervolcano. Talk about the world’s supervolcanoes, which are active, dormant, and extinct. Add the latest report on a supervolcano’s eruption and its destruction.

Identify the 15 countries in the Circum-Pacific belt and explore each territory’s risks to being a part of The Ring of Fire. Explain why it’s called The Ring of Fire and write its importance. You can also discuss the most dangerous volcano within the ring.

If talking about volcanoes as a whole seems too generic, focus on one aspect of it. Lahar is a mixture of water, pyroclastic materials, and rocky debris that rapidly flows down from the slopes of a volcano. First, briefly define a lahar in your essay and focus on how it forms. Then, consider its dangers to living things. You should also add lahar warning signs and the best way to escape it.

Use this prompt to learn and write the entire process of a volcanic eruption. Find out the equipment or operations professionals use to detect magma’s movement inside a volcano to signal that it’s about to blow up. Make your essay informative, and use data from reliable sources and documentaries to ensure you only present correct details.

If you don’t have any personal experience with volcanic eruptions, you can interview someone who does. To ensure you can collect all the critical points you need, create a questionnaire beforehand. Take care to ask about their feelings and thoughts on the situation.

Write about the common effects of volcanic eruptions at the beginning of your essay. Next, focus on discussing its psychological effects on the victims, such as those who have lost loved ones, livelihoods, and properties.

Help your readers prepare for disasters in an informative essay. List what should be done before, during, and after a volcanic eruption. Include relevant tips such as being observant to know where possible emergency shelters are. You can also add any assistance offered by the government to support the victims.Here’s a great tip: Proper grammar is critical for your essays. Grammarly is one of our top grammar checkers. Find out why in this  Grammarly review .

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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Beyond lava and ash: Stanford geologists explain what makes volcanoes dangerous

Recent eruptions offer reminders that lava, ash and size don’t fully explain how volcanoes become deadly. Geologists Gail Mahood and Donald Lowe describe some of the science and mysteries behind volcanic hazards.

Fountains of lava, whiffs of toxic gases, acidic plumes of vaporized seawater and blankets of ash: Those are just a few of the dangers that volcanoes have delivered in recent weeks, with Guatemala’s Fuego Volcano and Hawaii’s Kilauea Volcano each producing its most powerful eruption in decades.

Volcán de Fuego, or Fuego Volcano, in Guatemala erupts. Unlike Hawaiian volcanoes, eruptions in the Americas tend to produce dense clouds of ash, dust, rubble, and angular blocks that rumble down high, steep slopes. (Image credit: Shutterstock)

Dozens of people have died and thousands more have been evacuated in the area around Fuego as a result of its June 3 eruption. Like Kilauea, which in early May 2018 began a violent episode in an eruption that has carried on for nearly 35 years , Fuego was hardly at rest before this latest explosion. It often spews lava and ash several times in a year and can have many small eruptions in a single day.

But this time the Fuego eruption was different. Damage came fast and forcefully in a chaotic mixture of rock, gas and ash known as a pyroclastic flow – creating scenes of destruction bearing little resemblance to the images of creeping lava that have emerged from Kilauea. The contrast offers a reminder that the ways in which volcanoes become dangerous can be as varied as the places and communities where they rumble to life.

Stanford University geologists Gail Mahood (emerita) and Don Lowe, professors of geological sciences in the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences , have both studied volcanoes up close. They discussed surprising mysteries that remain for scientists around volcanic hazards, what and how researchers can learn from Fuego and other volcanoes after the ash settles and some of the science behind volcanic threats.

What differences caused Fuego to erupt so violently compared to Kilauea?

Don Lowe: We’ve just seen in Guatemala this small town buried in hot ash. Eruptions in the Americas tend to produce enormous amounts of ash, dust, rubble and angular blocks, and the volcanoes often have high, steep cones. Dense clouds of hot ash and rubble rumble down those slopes like freight trains and just gain momentum as they go. Rain and storms can mobilize loose rubble on these steep slopes and create cold debris flows. Hawaiian volcanoes tend to erupt less violent rivers and fountains of lava.

Gail Mahood: All volcanoes in Central America and in the Cascades in North America are different from Hawaii in that they are related to subduction zones, places where one plate squeezes under another. They are much more explosive partly because magmas they erupt have more water dissolved in them – up to 10 times as much as in Hawaiian volcanoes.

Think of magma like a bottle of champagne. When you pop the top, you lower the pressure and that CO 2 gas that was dissolved in the champagne forms bubbles and comes out.

Water, CO 2 , sulfur gases, fluorine and chlorine are dissolved in magma when it is stored at high pressure deep in the Earth. But if magma rises quickly, those volatile elements come out of solution in bubbles that grow so fast the bubble walls break. It’s like a magma foam breaking into pieces and just flying apart.

Magmas in Hawaii might have water making up only half of a percent by weight. If you have 4 or 6 percent water in a magma as we see in Central America, you have that much greater potential for explosive eruptions.

Volcanoes in subduction zones also have more viscous, stickier magmas, which provide more resistance as the bubbles grow. As a result, pressures inside the bubbles can get much higher. So there are more bubbles breaking because of more water, and when the bubbles finally do break, they do so with greater force.

How do pyroclastic flows form after the eruption of a volcano like Fuego in Guatemala?

Mahood : These can form directly from an explosive eruption, or they can form by lava that comes out and cools a little bit, gets stuck and fills the vent. Then maybe there’s an earthquake, or new magma pushes it from below, and that lava plugging the vent comes out in a cascade of hot blocks. Those continue to effervesce and produce ash. People around Fuego are largely being killed by pyroclastic flows.

You’ve studied how volcanoes can trigger dangerous flows of not only lava and ash, but also thick, viscous mixtures of particles and water known as debris flows. Can you describe an example of how this type of flow begins, and what can be done to minimize harm once it’s underway?

Lowe: In 1985, debris flows following the eruption of Nevado del Ruiz volcano in Colombia killed about 20,000 people in a town called Armero, 60 kilometers (37 miles) downslope. These flows originated when hot ash, like the stuff coming out of Fuego, landed on a glacier around the summit. A minor puff of ash melted just a small part of that glacier and sent huge volumes of water cascading down canyons.

We learned by looking at older deposits in roadcuts around this town that this had been a common process in the past. All the elements were there that should have made a planner recognize that this was not a good place for a town. Better geological studies would have shown that the area had suffered many similar catastrophes in the past. In fact, hazard maps created in the months before the eruption showed Armero would be in the path of any mudflows (a type of debris flow) triggered by the volcano. But those maps were not widely distributed.

We still don’t fully understand how debris flows work or how some of them can travel so far over very low slopes. One promising theory is that water gets sucked under the main flow like hydroplaning on your tires. Another theory centers on how particles interact in the flow. Do they just kind of carry along passively in the fluid? Maybe particles in a debris flow behave like gas molecules in a balloon – they collide with one another, exert pressures and help keep themselves suspended.

These details are important to understanding how far debris flows can go, how much stuff they can carry, how quickly they form – all of which are relevant to whether you build towns around volcanoes, deciding how far away they need to be and evaluating the danger of settlements and villages that are already there.

Disaster officials in Guatemala have said Fuego’s June 3 eruption affected more than 1 million people. How does this compare to some of the biggest eruptions in history?

Mahood: This is not a big eruption by any stretch of the imagination. One of the big problems in Guatemala and many other places – in Indonesia and the Philippines, for example – is the large population packed on and around volcanoes of this type. Moderately small eruptions can kill a lot of people.

Fuego is a very active volcano. Presumably, what’s happening this time is it’s been a little more explosive than typical, so these pyroclastic flows are making their way farther down the volcano. Instead of going down the flanks of the pointy, conical volcano and kind of petering out, they’re getting out into the flanks and spilling out into villages.

Is it possible to anticipate whether and when a given eruption will produce this type of hazard?

Mahood: We can often predict that there’s an eruption coming. What’s harder to predict is the exact nature of the eruption and the time of onset.

To map volcanic hazards, volcanologists go into the field and map the footprints of an eruption: ash that fell from high in the air, deposits from pyroclastic and debris flows, and lava. Ash can cover tens of thousands of square miles, but the particles are cold by the time they land so they are catastrophic only close to the vent of the volcano, where they can be thick enough to collapse roofs.

Back in the lab, we use carbon or argon dating to learn about how frequent each type of eruption has been in the past. Increasingly, we’re also analyzing crystals that grew in the magma before an eruption. They act as tiny recorders of temperature, pressure and gas content, so they can help us reconstruct the ascent of the magma and its storage conditions.

Best of all is if these analyses can be integrated with geophysical studies of seismicity or deformation around the volcano. Fuego is difficult to observe because it is heavily forested, and once you get to the top it’s covered in clouds. Geophysicists have gotten very good at predicting eruptions at Kilauea in Hawaii and Mount St. Helens in Washington, because they have watched so many eruptions. We know very well the signs that magma is moving through the crust at Kilauea: The summit deflates and earthquakes change in style in a particular way. The only thing that is not certain is when an eruption like the ongoing one at Kilauea is going to stop.

Is there any way to adapt to threats from volcanic eruptions?

Lowe: We’ve settled areas without much concern about natural disasters and dangers. However, once a disaster occurs, we need to try to limit future growth in that area and in places that face similar risks. We may not see a truly catastrophic eruption in our lifetimes. But in our children’s or grandchildren’s lifetimes, there will inevitably be eruptions that wipe out major population centers. We need to realize how important it is to look further in the future than just tomorrow.

Donald Lowe is also the Max Steineke Professor in the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.

Yes, there's life after religion

Discovering the beauty of volcanoes.

Published on November 13, 2019 in Personal

In my previous post , I discussed a couple of childhood experiences that gave me a fear of volcanoes.

However, that changed in 2014 when I visited Yellowstone and the nearby Craters of the Moon: Suddenly, I discovered that volcanic action could be more beautiful than dangerous.

Yellowstone: Like nowhere else on Earth

Yellowstone is one of the US’s best known national parks. In past times, it has been a massive volcano, and certainly could erupt again. However, right now it has constant geo-thermal activity on display in things like geysers, fumaroles, and bubbling pools.

My interest started in the very first car park we got to. There was a small, fenced-off area, and inside it we could see mud bubbling away. Personally, I found that pretty cool - how many car-parks around the world have an attraction like that? But it was also a sign that we were dealing with Nature as it was - the park rangers might have preferred not to have that feature there, but they could only rope it off, not stop it.

This was also shown in the general terrain: From a distance, areas with trees looked a lot like the nearby Tetons, but in the active areas there were often clouds of steam rising. Closer up, green areas and burnt out areas seemed mixed almost randomly:

This made it dangerous to put a foot wrong, as some parts had a very thin crust with scalding water or mud below the surface. There were boardwalks everywhere, and visitors were strongly advised to stay on them. Rangers told us that every week multiple people who left the path had to be rescued or treated.

This also means that it is a changing terrain. Pools can be very active for a few weeks, then peter out for months. Some things are fairly repetitive, with a predictable period of seconds, minutes, hours, or days. Others are almost completely unpredictable. I’m sure you could go to exactly the same part of Yellowstone two days running and get very different experiences. This also requires rangers to keep an eye on everything and change trails and signs as the attractions moved or changed.

Geysers are one of the most exciting features there, and probably the one most like a volcanic eruption. Old Faithful is of course the best known one, occurring fairly predictably every 1.5 hours or so (I saw it three times while I was in the area). Others are less predictable, including one we saw predicted to erupt at some point between 11:15PM and 3:15AM. But I did just happen to be near the spot for one which was more impressive than Old Faithful:

In the Old Faithful Visitor Centre they had a sign saying “The steam from 1/4 of the world’s active geysers can be seen from this window”. I don’t know whether Yellowstone was my favourite place on that US trip (though it was pretty close), but when people asked it was that sign that gave me the answer. All I had to say was that Yellowstone was like nowhere else on Earth, and they assumed it must have been my favourite.

The various bubbling springs and ponds were also fun to watch and sometimes very colourful. Grand Prismatic is the largest and most spectacular, though, like most visitors, we saw it obscured by steam. The different colours actually show different water temperatures that attract different extremophiles, and which does lead to nice effects like this:

Generally, though, my memory of Yellowstone is as a place where strange and unexpected things could and did happen. Maybe to school-me that would have caused even more fear, but to adult-me it made for a place of wonder:

The park even has its own Grand Canyon, which had impressive falls and really did look like a smaller and more sulfurous version of the Grand Canyon:

Basically, Yellowstone was a place where I got the sense there were powerful forces at work. While we couldn’t control them, we could try to understand them and live in harmony with them.

It seems to me that, so long as you’re careful, keep your eyes open, and follow instructions, you’re very unlikely to come to harm there. And I think the same is true of most volcanoes around the world.

Craters of the Moon: The lava field where astronauts train

Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho contains large lava fields from a number of eruptions, most recently around 2,000 years ago. It has the reputation of being black and ugly, but I personally found it both fascinating and beautiful. There’s just so much to see there.

For starters, there are a number of cones:

There are also lava caves, where parts of lava tubes have fallen in to give access. Some of these caves are large enough and enclosed enough that they maintain a constant temperature year round (we were there in summer, and there was ice at the back of one of the caves).

There are even tree-molds, where you can see the exact patterns of trees and bark caught (and destroyed) by the lava flow:

Looking into the distance, the terrain can seem somewhat monotonous and black:

However, close up there can be much more colour:

It originally got its name because it was thought to be similar to the Moon. Apollo astronauts have trained there. Then they went to the moon and found it wasn’t as similar as thought, but the name stuck.

NASA still use it for training today (for example, in the BASALT program ). It’s been chosen because it is both a scientific analog (basalt rich lava fields are common on both the Moon and Mars) and an operational analog (it has some of the roughest terrain on Earth). They’ve even done exercises there with a 20 minute delay in communications to try and simulate some of the challenges of a human Mars mission.

Anyway, leaving aside the space connection, I found that Craters of the Moon showed the awesome power of volcanoes to rapidly change and shape the landscape, but it also showed a beauty and a wonder that I didn’t expect.

Closer to home

Growing up, I don’t remember hearing too much about the volcanic heritage of Victoria. However, within six months of getting back from the US I decided to explore it to see how it compared with Yellowstone and Craters of the Moon.

And maybe it’s not quite as impressive: There were no active volcanic areas, and the lava flows were generally less visible than at Craters of the Moon (of course, in reality this is a good thing, because it means that the area has recovered).

However, I still love the area, and it’s way more accessible to me (while I haven’t returned to the US since 2014, I was able to revisit the Western District last year). Perhaps the most beautiful volcanic area I saw on that second trip was Tower Lake, where lakes conceal a multitude of craters, and the views stretch to the nearby ocean:

However, there were two places that particularly stood out for their variety: Budj Bim in Western Victoria, and Mount Gambier just over the South Australian border.

Budj Bim’s crater now sports a lake, justly called Lake Surprise because it’s not visible from outside the crater.

There is also a good circuit walk, which passes the high point of the hill, a natural bridge (a lava formation), then later follows the path of an ancient lava flow.

There are also two lava caves on this trail, which are fun to explore. They go far enough back that you can be completely in the dark if you want to be. In fact, I nearly managed to get stuck following a narrow tunnel with lots of tree roots coming through the roof. Be careful in caves!

Mount Gambier & Mount Schanck

Mount Gambier is the site of the most recent eruption in Australia, around 5,000 years ago and clearly attested in Aboriginal legends. It’s actually a fairly extensive precinct with a number of craters and outlets, including the crater lake Blue Lake. In this case, the crater is deep enough to expose the underlying limestone aquifer, and the lake is also part of Mount Gambier’s water supply. It gets its name from the colour of the water, which turns a vivid blue as it warms up, typically in November, then turns grey again in autumn.

However, I find the Valley Lake area more interesting (it’s even got a frisbee golf course!)

Above the Valley Lake area is the Centenary Tower, which is actually a reasonably large tower, but looks tiny compared to the hill it is on. It was initially built in 1900 to celebrate the centenary of Mount Gambier first being sighted and named by the crew of the HMS Lady Nelson in 1800. The management boast panoramic views from the tower (it wasn’t open when I was there last year, but I think I took the previous picture from the top of Centenary Tower in 2015).

Fairly near Mount Gambier is Mount Schanck, which has one of the best kept volcanic craters I know in Australia. For some reason, I didn’t think the crater walls were that steep, and so when I got to the bottom I started to climb out again. It turned out to be steeper than I bargained for, but at least I made it to the top. Then the person who started climbing after me climbed it at least three times faster and made it look easy…

Distinctively Australian wildlife

While I love the lava flows, craters, and volcanic action, those aren’t the only things you can find in a volcanic area. And here is where Australia has things that the US doesn’t: Yellowstone may have bison, wolves, and elk, but there’s not a marsupial or a gum tree to be seen. For the areas I’ve mentioned:

Mount Gambier’s Valley Lake has a specific wildlife conservation area that’s worth a visit:

Tower Hill is a game reserve. Probably the most notable Australian wildlife I’ve seen there are the emus, though it’s also the only time I’ve seen blue-tongued lizards in the wild. One emu in particular caught my attention by jumping up and down to try and get to the leaves that were out of its reach, a thing that I’ve never seen before or since. I don’t have any photos of that, but this is perhaps a more typical scene:

At Budj Bim I’ve seen more koalas in the wild than anywhere else in Australia. It was also there that I first learned to recognise the call of the koala, which I have never been able to describe properly, but do find very distinctive.

More volcanic action for Victoria?

I started my previous post talking about childhood fears of a volcano growing in my back garden. As an adult, I know that this almost certainly won’t happen in Melbourne. However, I can also see that volcanic action was a big part of what made Victoria what it is today.

So, could we have another volcano in Victoria any time soon? Well, experts have been saying for a while that the next one could be just round the corner (in geological time). As an example, consider this article , which suggests that it’s more likely volcanic action won’t be in our lifetime, but that if it does happen it could be very disruptive.

Where next?

One of the things I did shortly after getting home from the US was to re-read Volcano Adventure - yes, the book that made me scared of volcanoes in my childhood. And yes, the protagonists got into dangerous situations, but I found the setting appealing rather than scary. Which I think was what Willard Price intended for the series all along.

Of the various places around the Ring of Fire that they visited, the two that stood out in my mind were Japan and Hawaii. I also know that New Zealand North Island has volcanic action and is much closer to home, while the history of Italy appeals to me, which includes Vesuvius and the devastation wrought at Pompei.

Going back to the eruption of Parícutin that caught my attention in childhood, Wikipedia says it has become a tourist attraction. It does sound interesting, would show the effect of volcanic action on real lives, and it could be nice to finally lay the ghost of an ancient fear.

Maybe I will visit some of these places one day. Or maybe I won’t.

However, I think volcanoes are a powerful reminder of how our world is changing, in ways that my former fundamentalist self didn’t really appreciate. They can be dangerous and scary, and they do show the power of the earth and the fragility of humanity. However, I think they can also be both beautiful and fascinating to watch. And I think that, if you’re careful, the beauty outweighs the danger.

Tags: Personal , Volcano , Books , Willard Price , The Moon , Space , Disc golf , 2014 , 2015 , 2018

I'm Jon Morgan , a software developer based in Melbourne.

One of my interests is trying to understand the world around me, and then to share what I have learnt.

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Your burning questions about volcanoes, answered

Asu experts explain these molten mysteries.

Volcano! That little word brings so much to our minds — streams of lava and clouds of ash, rumbling mountains, the might of a planet’s fiery underbelly, and our own nervous anticipation, curiosity and fear.

In fact, if it seems like more and more people have volcanoes on the brain, there’s a good reason.

It’s not necessarily that the number of volcanic eruptions is increasing, though media coverage of dangerous eruptions, such as the one in Indonesia on Aug. 10 or other recent ones in New Zealand and the Philippines, may make it appear that way. Scientists can’t say without more data from Earth’s history.

What is certain is that humans (and our stuff) take up more space on the planet than ever before, putting more people in the paths of volcanoes.

“The impact of volcanic eruptions is increasing,” volcanologist Amanda Clarke said. “As the global population grows, more people are being affected by eruptions, so we care about them more.”

Despite their growing effect on our lives, volcanoes seem to retain their air of mystery, leaving many of us with questions. Where do they come from? What causes eruptions? How do scientists predict them?

Clarke and fellow volcanologist Christy Till — both faculty in the Arizona State University  School of Earth and Space Exploration  — answer these questions and more to help us understand how to safely live in the shadows of these mighty forces of nature.

Click to view larger image. Illustration by Shireen Dooling

How does a volcano form?

There are two sides to the making of a volcano: what happens below ground and what happens above.

Events below ground have to do with plate tectonics. This is the theory that the Earth’s crust — the outer shell on which we live — is broken up into plates that move around on top of Earth’s mantle like ice cubes in a glass of water. Scientists see it as the force behind earthquakes, mountains, continent migration and volcano formation.

“Scientists for a long time have scratched their heads trying to figure out why these volcanoes occur where they do.”  — Christy Till

There are three basic types of tectonic environments where volcanoes grow.

The first is a convergent plate boundary, where two plates crash and an oceanic plate slips underneath another plate, bringing water and carbon dioxide into the mantle. This triggers a magma-melting process and creates more explosive volcanoes. This process created the Ring of Fire, an arch of volcanoes that wraps around the Pacific Ocean.

The second, a divergent plate boundary, occurs when a gap opens up between two plates. The gap is filled in by the mantle underneath, causing magma to melt. These volcanoes are common on the ocean floor and erupt continuously as the plates keep going their separate ways.

Volcanoes that form in the middle of a plate are called hot spot volcanoes.

“Scientists for a long time have scratched their heads trying to figure out why these volcanoes occur where they do,” Till said. “Our best guess is that there’s magma or mantle rising up underneath, and for some reason, it’s just hotter than in other places, so we get a volcano.”

Above ground, the part of the volcano we can see is formed by eruptions.

For example, Mount St. Helens, a composite volcano in Washington, grew over time as layers of debris from a mix of effusive eruptions (think gooey lava) and explosive eruptions (think pumice stone and ash) built on top of each other.

Sunset Crater, a cinder cone volcano in Arizona, ejected glowing fountains of lava and ash when it erupted, which then fell around the crater to create its steep slopes.

And Kilauea, a shield volcano in Hawaii, formed its wide but shallow slopes as its lava spread out in all directions and built up in layers over time.

However, the type of eruption, and therefore volcano, circles back to another underground element.

“The composition of the magma, and the process deep in the earth that forms it, controls the eruption style to a large extent,” Till said.

What is magma?

Magma is the molten material that sits under or inside the Earth’s crust. (Lava is magma that has reached the surface through a volcano.) Till’s lab, the  Experimental Petrology and Igneous processes Center , looks at how magma forms on Earth and on other planets, as well as the underground processes that lead up to an eruption.

One of the surprises that researchers have learned in the last 10 years, she says, is that the magma below a volcano is not the cauldron of bubbling, liquid goo we might imagine.

“In fact, what’s below a volcano is more like a slushie. In a slushie, you have mostly ice crystals and some liquid, and at first, it’s hard to suck it through a straw because it’s mostly ice. You have to wait until it melts a little to get it through a straw.”

Magma, too, is composed of crystals (the geological kind) with just a little bit of liquid. Something must happen to the magma underground to warm it up, making it liquid enough to erupt. To study those processes, Till gathers samples of those crystals, which she likens to “little black boxes,” from volcanic deposits on the surface and examines them with microscopes.

“These crystals have little zones in them, much like tree rings. They can tell us about the temperature, pressure and composition of the magma chamber, and also how long before an eruption these specific events happened,” she said.

Video by ASU Research

What happens during a volcanic eruption?

First, a fresher, hotter, more liquid magma rises from deeper in the Earth’s mantle and warms the slushie magma in the volcano’s chamber. One way for it to arrive there is via an earthquake, which might push up fresh magma or open new pathways for it to travel upward. However, not every earthquake can warm a magma chamber and cause an eruption, Till notes.

“There’s also a possibility that the seismic waves passing through the crust can kind of jiggle a magma body and cause it to fizz. Just like with a soda, those bubbles can generate overpressure and buoyancy, driving an eruption,” Clarke said.

As the new and old magmas mix, the crystal mush heats up and comes to the surface. It could be an effusive eruption of syrupy, flowing lava, or it could be an explosive eruption of ash, cinders and hunks of molten rock known as lava bombs. The amount of gas in the body of magma determines how violent the eruption is.

For those that are more explosive, the volcano could generate an ash cloud that travels great distances, which could have indirect effects like roof damage, bad air quality or crop devastation. It could also unleash the significantly more destructive pyroclastic flow, which is a searing wave of dense ash and gases that rushes along the ground, killing and burning everything in its path.

“The plume is the big footprint, but only indirectly dangerous,” Clarke said. “The pyroclastic flows are the smaller footprint, but much more dangerous.”

If the volcano is near a body of water, there is another opportunity for additional destruction — pyroclastic flows entering the sea can cause tsunamis.

How do scientists predict eruptions?

“The bread and butter of prediction is seismic data,” Clarke said. Volcanologists take seismic stations, which measure vibrations in the earth, and distribute them all around a volcano to get the best read on what’s happening underneath.

Another important tool is the tiltmeter, which, as its name suggests, measures any miniscule changes in the level of the earth. Typically, before a volcano erupts, the ground around it inflates slightly, which scientists call deformation.

Observatories typically also monitor gas emissions, such as sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide, which may indicate changes happening deeper in the volcano.

“If you want to know what a volcano is capable of doing in the future, the first thing you have to do is look at what it did in the past.”  — Amanda Clarke

And finally, cameras — both standard and thermal — help volcanologists keep an eye on activity. Clarke explains that thermal cameras are especially helpful for tall volcanoes whose tops may often be obscured by clouds.

“Using these kinds of data together, you can even predict how much magma there is, and at what depth,” Clarke said.

Having an idea of what a particular volcano can do once it’s ready to erupt is also a critical piece of prediction that allows volcanologists to make safety recommendations.

“If you want to know what a volcano is capable of doing in the future, the first thing you have to do is look at what it did in the past,” Clarke said.

Researchers do this by collecting ash deposits from a wide area and dating them. This gives them an idea of how large a volcano’s eruptions were and how frequently they occurred. However, the method has its limitations. Hardened magma is much harder to date than ash, and supervolcanoes have eruptions so large that the ash travels thousands of miles, making it difficult to determine their true size.

There’s also the trouble of inconsistent eruptions. Volcanoes tend to fluctuate in the size of their eruptions; a big one may be followed by several smaller ones before another large one happens. That’s why it’s crucial, Clarke said, to look over long timespans for an accurate picture of a volcano’s history.

How far in advance scientists can predict an eruption depends on a host of factors, one of which is whether the eruption is large or small. Large eruptions are farther apart, so they might have longer warning times — from weeks away to even decades — while the magma slowly heats up after the last eruption. Small eruptions are closer together, so their warning times are shorter — months to hours. However, an abundance of data means that those predictions are typically more precise than for large eruptions.

How can you stay safe in an area with volcanic activity?

Clarke has seen too many volcanic eruptions to count, but she says that her time on the island of Montserrat while getting her PhD was when she learned how to be safe around them.

“I think some people take a bit of a macho attitude about trying to get close to volcanoes,” she said.

Proper precautions, she argues, help people stay alive.

“The main thing is to understand what the local observatories and scientists are doing. They collect data. They know what’s going on,” she said.

Till has not experienced a volcanic eruption and, despite an academic interest in seeing one, is largely happy to keep it that way.

“I’ve been to volcanoes that could erupt at any time, but I was fortunate enough not to be there when they were erupting,” she said. Like Clarke, by checking in with observatories, she’s managed to keep herself safe in dangerous environments.

In the U.S., you can find the latest reports on activity at the  U.S. Geological Survey website . Abroad, other nations may have an equivalent database online, or you can visit the Smithsonian’s  Global Volcanism Program website , which gathers data from around the world.

These resources can help you find out what the alert level is in the area (and what colored or numbered alert system locals use), and whether there has been any activity recently. Clarke said it’s not a good idea to assume that other groups are communicating with the local observatory and recommends always checking for yourself.

“If you get a permit from the forest service to hike to a crater, that doesn’t mean it’s safe. That doesn’t mean they’ve checked the data.”

What do classifications like active, dormant and extinct mean?

Not much, it turns out.

Clarke explains that people used to classify a volcano as “active” if it had erupted in historic time. The problem with this is that historic time varies from culture to culture, because it refers to the time when written records became available. Volcanoes in Italy have extensive documentation going back thousands of years, but volcanoes in the U.S. don’t have as deep of a written history.

“Having had a historic eruption is a meaningless classification, because there’s no number that goes along with that,” Clarke said.

A dormant volcano is one that is active but not currently erupting, while an extinct volcano has not erupted in historic time and is unlikely to erupt in the future.

A handier — and globally applicable — way to determine if a volcano is active is whether it has erupted during the Holocene, our present epoch which began over 11,000 years ago. However, this marker ultimately has its own flaws. A volcano can have an incredibly long lifespan, sometimes lasting millions of years. Silence in recent millennia doesn’t mean its erupting days are over.

“Whether it erupted in the Holocene is meaningless when it comes to someplace like Yellowstone or the Valles Caldera, whose timescales are way longer than we even have the capacity to document,” Clarke said.

Can a volcanic eruption be stopped?

Ideas for stopping eruptions range from venting gases to relieve volcanic pressure to plugging the top like a cork in a bottle. However, these concepts remain untested, and most volcanologists don’t take such efforts seriously.

What has found some success, though, is using barriers to redirect lava and pyroclastic flows away from towns and important structures. Clarke gives the example of Heimaey, a harbor town in Iceland that experienced a nearby eruption in 1973. The resulting lava flow threatened to close off the bay that was their main economic resource.

“As it started to enter the bay, they got out all the water hoses they had and sprayed it, and it solidified there. They used the lava itself as a barrier,” Clarke said.

Do volcanoes affect the climate?

Volcanic eruptions have both positive and negative effects on the climate. For example, their plumes carry gases like sulfur dioxide, which reach above the clouds into the stratosphere. There, the gas forms into droplets of sulfuric acid.

“The sulfur compounds can be circulated around the globe, and they can filter out the sun’s light and heat to cool global temperatures,” Clarke said.

Researchers speculate that such an event — an 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia — was behind the 1816 “year without a summer” that caused low temperatures and heavy rains in Europe and North America, leading to food shortages.

Whether an eruption can have a worldwide effect may depend on the size and composition of the ash cloud, as well as the volcano’s position on Earth. The cooling effect is always temporary. The longest documented cooling period lasted about three years, though Clarke believes that super eruptions in Earth’s history may have had longer temperature effects.

If you’re thinking that this sounds like a good way to combat today’s warming temperatures, you’re not alone. Some scientists are beginning to research the possibilities of solar engineering — a strategy inspired by volcanoes that would use planes to spray sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere.

Another climate effect of volcanoes is that their ash makes super fertile soil, creating lush environments in the areas surrounding them. The plants and trees that grow in this rich soil capture and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

“What’s in fertilizer? Phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium. Those are abundant in volcanic products,” Clarke said. “Basically, they act as a fertilizer just like you might buy at Agway or ACE Hardware.”

Nutrients from falling ash easily leach into the soil, she adds, making it an excellent delivery system as well.

What are volcanoes like on other planets?

Planets, and moons as well, can have volcanoes very different from those on Earth. Jupiter’s moon Io has more volcanic activity than any other object in our solar system; its lava fountains can be many miles high. And the dwarf planet Ceres has ice volcanoes, or cryovolcanoes. They erupt water instead of magma, which freezes on its surface.

“The compositions of planets are different, so the kinds of magma they have are different, which then gives them unique eruptive behavior,” Till said.

Her lab works to understand the magma of other celestial bodies by creating it in a special device called a piston cylinder, which simulates conditions on the interior of a planet.

“In the same way that you’d mix flour and sugar and eggs to make a cake, we mix silica and magnesium and iron and other elements in the proportion we want to study. Then we put them in our equivalent of an oven to make magma at high pressures and temperatures,” Till said. “When we do this, we can discover how magmas on other planets are different.”

Her team has begun work on a new project that will study the types of magma that may exist on planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets. Knowing more about their magma will give researchers glimpses into those planets’ volcanic behavior.

“Over 4,000 exoplanets have been confirmed in the last five years or so, and we’re just starting to investigate them,” Till said. “It’s an exciting time.”

Top photo from Shutterstock.

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Home — Essay Samples — Environment — Natural Disasters — The Environmental Effects of Volcanoes: A Comprehensive Analysis

The Environmental Effects of Volcanoes: a Comprehensive Analysis

• Categories: Natural Disasters

About this sample

Words: 621 |

Published: Mar 6, 2024

Words: 621 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Air pollution and climate change, positive effects of volcanic activity, mitigating the environmental impacts of volcanoes.

• The release of gases and particulate matter into the atmosphere
• Global cooling caused by volcanic ash blocking out sunlight
• Contribution to air pollution and respiratory problems
• Impact on climate change through the release of carbon dioxide
• Creation of new landmasses supporting new ecosystems
• Increased biodiversity on newly formed landmasses
• Contribution to the formation of mineral deposits
• Use of volcanic ash and rocks for various purposes
• Close monitoring of volcanic activity to predict eruptions
• Development of effective mitigation strategies
• Reducing reliance on fossil fuels and supporting renewable energy sources
• Protection of vulnerable ecosystems and biodiversity

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Geography Notes

Essay on volcanoes: top 7 essays on volcanoes| disasters | geography.

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Here is a compilation of essays on ‘Volcanoes’ for class 7, 8, 9, 10. Find paragraphs, long and short essays on ‘Volcanoes’ especially written for school students.

Essay on Volcanoes

Essay Contents:

• Essay on the World Distribution of Volcanoes

Essay # 1. Concept of Vulcanicity :

The terms volcanoes, mechanism of volcanoes and vulcanicity are more or less synonymous to com­mon man but these have different connotations in geology and geography. ‘A volcano is a vent, or opening, usually circular or nearly circular in form, through which heated materials consisting of gases, water, liquid lava and fragments of rocks are ejected from the highly heated interior to the surface of the earth’.

According to A. Holmes and D.L. Holmes (1978) a volcano is essentially a fissure or vent, communicating with the interior, from which flows of lava, fountains of incandescent spray or explosive bursts of gases and volcanic ashes are erupted at the surface.

On the other hand, ‘the term vulcanicity covers all those processes in which molten rock mate­rial or magma rises into the crust or is poured out on its surface, there to solidify as a crystalline or semicrystaline rock’.

Some scientists have also used the term of vulcanism as synonym to the term of vulcanicity. For example, P.G. Worcester (1948) has maintained that ‘vulcanism includes all phenomena connected with the movement of heated material from the interior to or towards the surface of the earth.’

It is apparent from the above definitions of volcano and vulcanicity (vulcanism) that the later (vulcanicity) is a broader mechanism which is related to both the environments, endogenetic and exogenetic. In other words, vulcanicity includes all those processes and mechanisms which are related to the origin of magmas, gases and vapour, their ascent and appear­ance on the earth’s surface in various forms.

It is evident that the vulcanicity has two components which operate below the crustal surface and above the crust. The endogenetic mechanism of vulcanicity includes the creation of hot and liquid magmas and gases in the mantle and the crust, their expansion and upward ascent, their intrusion, cooling and solidification in various forms below the crustal surface (e.g., batholiths, laccoliths, sills, dykes, lopoliths, phacoliths etc.) while the exogenous mechanism includes the process of appearance of lava, volcanic dusts and ashes, fragmen­tal material, mud smoke etc. in different forms e.g., fissure flow or lava flood (fissure or quiet type of volcanic eruption), violent explosion (central type of volcanic eruption), hot springs, geysers, fumaroles, solfatara, mud volcanoes etc. It may be, thus, con­cluded that the vulcanicity is a broader mechanism which includes several events and processes which work below the crust as well as above the crust whereas volcano is a part of vulcanicity (vulcanism).

Essay # 2. Components of Volcanoes :

Volcanoes of explosive type or central eruption type are associated with the accumulated volcanic materials in the form of cones which are called as volcanic cones or simply volcanic mountains. There is a vent or opening, of circular or nearly circular shape, almost in the centre of the summital part of the cone.

This vent is called as volcanic vent or volcanic mouth which is connected with the interior part of the earth by a narrow pipe, which is called as volcanic pipe. Vol­canic materials of various sorts are ejected through this pipe and the vent situated at the top of the pipe. The enlarged form of the volcanic vent is known as volcanic crater and caldera. Volcanic materials include lavas, volcanic dusts and ashes, fragmental materials etc. (fig. 9.1).

Essay # 3. Types of Volcanoes:

There is a wide range of variations in the mode of volcanic eruptions and their periodicity.

Thus, vocanoes are classified on the basis of:

(i) The mode of eruption, and

(ii) The period of eruption and the nature of their activities.

(i) Classification on the Basis of the Nature of Volcanic Eruptions :

Volcanic eruptions occur mostly in two ways viz.:

(i) Violent and explosive type of eruption of lavas, volcanic dusts, volcanic ashes and fragmental materi­als through a narrow pipe and small opening under the impact of violent gases, and

(ii) Quiet type or fissure eruption along a long fracture or fissure or fault due to weak gases and huge volume of lavas.

Thus, on the basis of the nature and intensity of eruptions volcanoes are divided into two types e.g.:

(1) Central eruption type or explosive eruption type, and

(2) Fissure eruption type or quiet eruption type.

(1) Volcanoes of central eruption type:

Central eruption type or explosive eruption type of volcanoes occurs through a central pipe and small opening by breaking and blowing off crustal surface due to violent and explosive gases accumulated deep within the earth. The eruption is so rapid and violent that huge quantity of volcanic materials consisting of lavas, volcanic dusts and ashes, fragmental materials etc., are ejected upto thousands of metres in the sky.

These materials after falling down accumulate around the volcanic vent and form volcanic cones of various sorts. Such volcanoes are very destructive and are disastrous natural hazards.

Explosive volcances are further divided into 5 sub-types on the basis of difference in the intensity of eruption, variations in the ejected volcanic material and the period of the action of volcanic events as given below:

(i) Hawaiin type of volcanoes:

Such volcanoes erupt quietly due to less viscous lavas and non-violent nature of gases. Rounded blisters of hot and glowing mass/boll of lavas (blebs of molten lava) when caught by a strong wind glide in the air like red and glowing hairs. The Hawaiin people consider these long glassy threads of red molten lava as Pele’s hair (Pele is the Hawaiin goddess of fire).

Such volcanoes have been named as Hawaiin type because of the fact that such eruptions are of very common occurrence on Hawaii island. The eruption of Kilavea volcano of the southern Hawaii island in 1959-60 continued for seven days (from November 14 to 20, 1959) when about 30 mil­lion cubic metres of lavas poured out.

The intermittent eruptions continued upto December 21, 1959, when the volcano became dormant. It again erupted on January 13, 1960 and about 100 million cubic metres of lavas were poured out of one kilometre long fissure.

(ii) Strombolian type of volcanoes:

Such volca-noes, named after Stromboli volcano of Lipari island in the Mediterranean Sea, erupt with moderate inten­sity. Besides lava, other volcanic materials like pum­ice, scoria, bombs etc. are also ejected upto greater height in the sky. These materials again fall down in the volcanic craters. The eruptions are almost rhythemic or nearly continuous in nature but sometimes they are interrupted by long intervals.

(iii) Vulcanian type of volcanoes:

These are named after Vulcano of Lipari island in the Mediterranean Sea. Such volcanoes erupt with great force and inten­sity. The lavas are so viscous and pasty that these are quickly solidified and hardened between two eruptions and thus they crust over (plug) the volcanic vents.

These lava crusts obstruct the escape of violent gases during next eruption. Consequently, the violent gases break and shatter the lava crusts into angular fragments and appear in the sky as ash-laden volcanic clouds of dark and often black colour assuming a convoluted or cauli­flower shape (fig. 9.2c).

(iv) Peleean type of volcanoes:

These are named after the Pelee volcano of Martinique Island in the Caribbean Sea. These are the most violent and most explosive type of volcanoes. The ejected lavas are most viscous and pasty. Obstructive domes of lava are formed above the conduits of the volcanoes. Thus, every successive eruption has to blow off these lava domes. Consequently, each successive eruption oc­curs with greater force and intensity making roaring noise.

The most disastrous volcanic eruption of Mount Pelee on May 8,1902 destroyed the whole of the town of St. Pierre killing all the 28,000 inhabitants leaving behind only two survivors to mourn the sad demise of their brethren. Such type of disastrous violent erup­tions are named as nuee ardente meaning thereby ‘glowing cloud’ of hot gases, lavas etc., coming out of a vocanic eruption.

The nuee ardente spread laterally out of the mountain (Mount Pelee) with great speed which caused disastrous avalanches on the hillslopes which plunged down the slope at a speed of about 100 kilometres per hour. The annihilating explosive erup­tion of Krakatoa volcano in 1883 in Krakatoa Island located in Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra is another example of violent volcanic eruption of this type.

(v) Visuvious type of volcanoes:

These are more or less similar to Vulcanian and Strombolian type of volcanoes, the difference lies only in the intensity of expulsion of lavas and gases. There is extremely vio­lent expulsion of magma due to enormous volume of explosive gases.

Volcanic materials are thrown up to greater height in the sky. The ejected enormous vol­ume of gases and ashes forms thick clouds of ‘cauli­flower form.’ The most destructive type of eruption is called as Plinian type because of the fact that such type of eruption was first observed by Plini in 79 A.D.

(2) Fissure eruption type of volcanoes:

Such vol­canoes occur along a long fracture, fault and fissure and there is slow upwelling of magma from below and the resultant lavas spread over the ground surface. The speed of lava movement depends on the nature of magma, volume of magma, slope of ground surface and temperature conditions. The Laki fissure eruption of 1783 in Iceland was so quick and enormous that huge volume of lavas measuring about 15 cubic kilometers was poured out from a 28-km long fissure. The lava flow was so enormous that it travelled a distance of 350 kilometres.

(ii) Classification on the Basis of Periodicity of Erup­tions :

Volcanoes are divided into 3 types on the basis of period of eruption and interval period between two eruptions of a volcano e.g.:

(i) Active volcanoes,

(ii) Dormant volcanoes, and

(iii) Extinct volcanoes.

(i) Active Volcanoes:

Active volcanoes are those which constantly eject volcanic lavas, gases, ashes and fragmental ma­terials. It is estimated that there are about more than 500 volcanoes in the world. Etna and Stromboli of the Mediterranean Sea are the most significant examples of this category. Stromboli Volcano is known as Light House of the Mediterranean because of continuous emission of burning and luminous incandescent gases.

Most of the active volcanoes are found along the mid- oceanic ridges representing divergent plate margins (constructive plate margins) and convergent plate margins (destructive plate margins represented by eastern and western margins of the Pacific Ocean). The latest eruption took place from Pinatubo volcano in June 1991 in Philippines. Mayon of Philippines re-erupted in Feb. 2000.

(ii) Dormant Volcanoes:

Dormant volcanoes are those which become quiet after their eruptions for some time and there are no indications for future eruptions but suddenly they erupt very violently and cause enormous damage to human health and wealth.

Visuvious volcano is the best example of dormant volcano which erupted first in 79 A.D., then it kept quiet upto 1631 A.D., when it suddenly exploded with great force. The subsequent eruptions occurred in 1803, 1872, 1906, 1927, 1928, and 1929.

(iii) Extinct volcanoes:

The volcanoes are con­sidered extinct when there are no indications of future eruption. The crater is filled up with water and lakes are formed. It may be pointed out that no volcano can be declared permanently dead as no one knows, what is happening below the ground surface.

Essay # 4. Mechanisms and Causes of Vulcanism:

As stated earlier the volcanic eruptions are asso­ciated with weaker zones of the earth surfaces repre­sented by mountain building at the destructive or convergent plate margins and fracture zones repre­sented by constructive or divergent plate boundaries at the splitting zones of mid-oceanic ridges and the zones of transform faults represented by conservative plate boundaries.

The mechanism of vulcanicity (vulcanism) and volcanic eruptions is closely associated with sev­eral interconnected processes such as:

(i) Gradual in­crease of temperature with increasing depth at the rate of 1°C per 32 m due to heat generated from the disintegration of radioactive elements deep within the earth.

(ii) Origin of magma because of lowering of melting point caused by reduction in the pressure of overlying superincumbent load due to fracture caused by splitting of plates and their movement in opposite direction.

(iii) Origin of gases and vapour due to heat­ing of water which reaches underground through per­colation of rainwater and melt-water (water derived through the melting of ice and snow).

(iv) The ascent of magma forced by enormous volume of gases and vapour, and

(v) Finally the occurrence of volcanic eruptions of either violent explosive central type or quiet fissure type depending upon the intensity of gases and vapour and the nature of crustal surface.

Theory of plate tectonics now very well explains the mechanism of vulcanism and volcanic eruptions. In fact, volcanic eruptions are very closely associated with the plate boundaries. It may be pointed out that the types of plate movements and plate boundaries also determine the nature and intensity of volcanic erup­tion. Most of the active fissure volcanoes are found along the mid-oceanic ridges which represent splitting zones of divergent plate boundaries (fig. 9.5).

Two plates move in opposite directions from the mid-oceanic ridges due to thermal convective currents which are originated in the mantle below the crust (plates). This splitting and lateral spreading of plates creates fractures and faults (transform faults) which cause pressure release and lowering of melting point and thus materials of upper mantle lying below the mid-oceanic ridges are melted and move upward as magmas under the impact of enormous volume of accumulated gases and vapour.

This rise of magmas along the mid-oceanic ridges (constructive or divergent plate bounda­ries) causes fissure eruptions of volcanoes and there is constant upwelling of lavas. These lavas are cooled and solidified and are added to the trailing ends of divergent plate boundaries and thus there is constant creation of new basaltic crust.

The volcanic eruptions of Iceland and the islands located along the mid- Atlantic ridge are caused because of sea-floor spread­ing and divergence of plates. It is obvious that diver­gent or constructive plate boundaries are always asso­ciated with quiet type of fissure flows of lavas because the pressure release of superincumbent load due to divergence of plates and formation of fissures and faults is a slow and gradual process.

It is apparent from the above discussion that the mid-oceanic ridges, representing splitting zones, are associated with active volcanoes wherein the supply of lava comes from the upper mantle just below the ridge because of differential melting of the rocks into tholeiitic basalts.

Since there is constant supply of basaltic lavas from below the mid-oceanic ridges and hence the volcanoes are active near the ridges but the supply of lavas decreases with increasing distance from the mid- oceanic ridges and therefore the volcanoes become inactive, dormant and extinct depending on their dis­tances from the source of lava supply, e.g., mid-oceanic ridges.

This fact has been validated on the basis of the study of the basaltic floor of the Atlantic Ocean and the lavas of several islands. It has been found that the islands nearer to the mid-Atlantic Ridge have younger lavas whereas the islands away from the ridge have older lavas. For example, the lavas of Azores islands Situated on either side of the mid-Atlantic Ridge are 4- million years old whereas the lavas of Cape Verde Island, located far away from the said ridge, are 120- million years old.

Destructive or convergent plate boundaries are associated with explosive type of volcanic eruptions. When two convergent plates collide along Benioff zone (subduction zone), comparatively heavier plate margin (boundary) is subducted beneath comparatively lighter plate boundary. The subducted plate margin, after reaching a depth of 100 km or more in the upper mantle, is melted and thus magma is formed.

This magma is forced to ascend by the enormous volume of accumulated explosive gases and thus magma appears as violent volcanic eruption on the earth’s surface. Such type of volcanic eruption is very common along the destructive or convergent plate boundaries which represent the volcanoes of the Circum-Pacific Belt and the Mid-Continental Belt.

The volcanoes of the island arcs and festoons (off the east coast of Asia) are caused due to subduction of oceanic crust (plate) say Pacific e below the continental plate, say Asiatic plate near Japan Trench.

Essay # 5. Hazardous Effects of Volcanic Eruptions :

Volcanic eruptions cause heavy damage to human lives and property through advancing hot lavas and fallout of volcanic materials; destruction to human structures such as buildings, factories, roads, rails, airports, dams and reservoirs through hot lavas and fires caused by hot lavas; floods in the rivers and climatic changes.

A few of the severe damages wrought by volcanic eruptions may be summarized as given below:

(1) Huge volumes of hot and liquid lavas mov­ing at considerably fast speed (recorded speed is 48 km per hour) bury human structures, kill people and ani­mals, destroy agricultural farms and pastures, plug rivers and lakes, burn and destroy forest etc. The great eruption of Mt. Loa on Hawaii poured out such a huge volume of lavas that these covered a distance of 53 km down the slope.

Enormous Laki Lava flow of 1783 A.D. travelled a distance of 350 km engulfing two churches, 15 agricultural farms and killing 24 per cent of the total population of Iceland. The cases of Mt. Pelee eruption of 1902 in Martinique Island (in Carib­bean Sea) (total death 28,000) and St. Helens eruption of 1980 (Washington, USA) are representative exam­ples of damages done by lava movement. The thick covers of green and dense forests on the flanks of Mt. St. Helens were completely destroyed due to severe forest fires kindled by hot lavas.

(2) Fallout of immense quantity of volcanic materials including fragmental materials (pyroclastic materials), dusts and ashes, smokes etc. covers large ground surface and thus destroys crops, vegetation and buildings, disrupts and diverts natural drainage sys­tems, creates health hazards due to poisonous gases emitted during the eruption, and causes killer acid rains.

(3) All types of volcanic eruptions, if not pre­dicted well in advance, causes tremendous losses to precious human lives. Sudden eruption of violent and explosive type through central pipe does not give any time to human beings to evacuate themselves and thus to save themselves from the clutches of death looming large over them. Sudden eruption of Mt. Pelee on the Island of Martinique, West Indies in the Caribbean Sea, on May 8, 1902 destroyed the whole of St. Pierre town and killed all the 28,000 inhabitants leaving behind only two survivors to mourn the sad demise of their brethren.

The heavy rainfall, associated with volcanic eruptions, mixing with falling volcanic dusts and ashes causes enormous mudflow or ‘lahar’ on the steep slopes of volcanic cones which causes sudden deaths of human beings. For example, great mud flow created on the steep slopes of Kelut volcano in Japan in the year 1919 killed 5,500 people.

(4) Earthquakes caused before and after the volcanic eruptions generate destructive tsunamis seis­mic waves which create most destructive and disas­trous sea waves causing innumerable deaths of human beings in the affected coastal areas. Only the example of Krakatoa in 1883 would be sufficient enough to demonstrate the disastrous impact of tsunamis which generated enormous sea waves of 30 to 40 m height which killed 36,000 people in the coastal areas of Java and Sumatra.

(5) Volcanic eruptions also change the radiation balance of the earth and the atmosphere and thus help in causing climatic changes. Greater concentration of volcanic dusts and ashes in the sky reduces the amount of insolation reaching the earth’s surface as they scat­ter and reflect some amount of incoming shortwave solar radiation. Dust veils, on the other hand, do not hinder in the loss of heat of the earth’s surface through outgoing long-wave terrestrial radiation.

The ejection of nearly 20 cubic kilometres of fragmental materials, dusts and ashes upto the height of 23 km in the sky during the violent eruption of Krakatoa volcano on August 27, 1883 formed a thick dust veil in the strato­sphere which caused a global decrease of solar radia­tion received at the earth’s surface by 10 to 20 per cent.

(6) A group of scientists believes that volcanic eruptions and fallout of dusts and ashes cause mass extinction of a few species of animals. Based on this hypothesis the mass extinction of dinosaurs about 60 million years ago has been related to increased world­wide volcanic activity. Acid rains accompanied by volcanic eruptions cause large-scale destruction of plants and animals.

Essay # 6. Volcanic Materials :

Volcanic materials discharged during eruptions include gases and vapour, lavas, fragmental materials and ashes.

(i) Vapour and Gases:

Steam and vapour consti­tute 60 to 90 per cent of the total gases discharged during a volcanic eruption.

Steam and vapour include:

(i) Phreatic vapour, and

(ii) Magmatic vapour whereas volcanic gases include carbon dioxide, nitrogen ox­ides, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen, carbon monoxide, etc.

Besides, certain compounds are also ejected with the volcanic gases e.g., sulphurated hydrogen, hydrochlo­ric acid, volatile chlorides of iron, potassium and other metallic matter.

(ii) Magma and Lava:

Generally, molten rock materials are called magmas below the earth’s surface while they are called lavas when they come at the earth’s surface.

Lavas and magmas are divided on the basis of silica percentage into two groups e.g.:

(i) Acidic magma (higher percentage of silica, and

(ii) Basic lava (low percentage of silica).

Lavas and magmas are also classified on the basis of light and dark coloured minerals into:

(i) Felsic lava, and

(ii) Mafic lava.

Basaltic or mafic lava is characterized by maxi­mum fluidity. Basaltic lava spreads on the ground surface with maximum flow speed (from a few kilome­tres to 100 kilometres per hour, average How speed being 45 to 65 km per hour) due to high fluidity and low viscosity. Basaltic lava is the hottest lava (1,000° to 1,200 C).

Lava flow is divided into two types on the basis of Hawaiin language e.g.:

(i) Pahoehoe, and

(ii) Aa Aa lava flow or block lava flow.

Pahoehoe lava has high fluidity and spreads like thin sheets. This is also known as ropy lava. On the other hand aa aa lava is more viscous. Pahoehoe lava, when solidified in the form of sacks or pillow, is called pillow lava.

(iii) Fragmental or Pyroclastic Materials:

Fragmental or pyroclastic materials thrown during explosive type of eruption are grouped into three categories:

(i) Essential materials include con­solidated forms of live lavas. These are also known as tephra which means ash. Essential materials are unconsolidated and their size is upto 1 mm.

(ii) Acces­sory materials include dead lavas,

(iii) Accidental materials include fragmental materials of crustal rocks.

On the basis of size pyroclastic materials are grouped into:

(i) Volcanic dust (finest particles),

(ii) Volcanic ash (2 mm in size),

(iii) Lapilli (of the size of peas) and

(iv) Volcanic bombs (6 cm or more in size), which are of different shapes viz. ellipsoidal, discoidal, cuboidal, and irregularly rounded.

The dimension of average volcanic bombs ranges from the size of a base-ball or basket-ball to giant size. Sometimes the volcanic bombs weigh 100 tonnes in weight and are thrown upto a distance of 10 km.

Essay # 7. World Distribution of Volcanoes :

Like earthquakes, the spatial distribution of volcanoes over the globe is well marked and well understood because volcanoes are found in a well-defined belt or zone (fig. 9.3). Thus, the distributional pattern of volcanoes is zonal in character.

If we look at the world distribution of volcanoes it appears that the volcanoes are associated with the weaker zones of the earth’s crust and these are closely associated with seismic events say earthquakes. The weaker zones of the earth are represented by folded mountains (western cordillera of North America, Andes, mountains of East Asia and East Indies) with the exceptions of the Alps and the Himalayas, and fault zones.

Volcanoes are also associated with the meeting zones of the continents and oceans. Occurrences of more volcanic eruptions along coastal margins and during wet season denote the fact that there is close relationship between water and volcanic eruption. Similarly, volcanic eruptions are closely associated with the activities of mountain building and fracturing.

Based on plate tectonics, there is close rela­tionship between plate margins and vulcanicity as most of the world’s active volcanoes are associated with the plate boundaries. About 15 per cent of the worlds’ active volcanoes are found along the construc­tive plate margins or divergent plate margins (along the mid-oceanic ridges where two plates move in opposite directions) whereas 80 per cent volcanoes are associ­ated with the destructive or convergent plate boundaries (where two plates collide). Besides, some volcanoes are also found in intraplate regions e.g., volcanoes of the Hawaii Island, fault zones of East Africa etc.

Like earthquakes, there are also three major belts or zones of volcanoes in the world viz.:

(i) Circum-Pacific belt,

(ii) Mid-continental belt, and

(iii) Mid-oceanic ridge belt (fig. 9.3).

(i) Circum-Pacific belt:

The circum-Pacific belt, also known as the ‘volcanic zones of the convergent oceanic plate margins’, includes the volcanoes of the eastern and western coastal areas of the Pacific Ocean (or the western coastal margins of North and South Americas and the eastern coastal margins of Asia), of island arcs and festoons off the east coast of Asia and of the volcanic islands scattered over the Pacific Ocean.

This volcanic belt is also called as the fire girdle of the Pacific or the fire ring of the Pacific. This belt begins from Erebus Mountain of Antarctica and runs north­ward through Andes and Rockies mountains of South and North Americas to reach Alaska from where this belt turns towards eastern Asiatic coast to include the volcanoes of island arcs and festoons (e.g., Sakhalin, Kamchatka, Japan, Philippines etc.).

The belt ulti­mately merges with the mid-continental belt in the East Indies. Most of high volcanic cones and volcanic mountains are found in this belt. Most of the volcanoes are found in chains e.g., the volcanoes of the Aleutian Island, Hawaii Island, Japan etc.

About 22 volcanic mountains are found in group in Ecuador wherein the height of 15 volcanic mountains is more than 4560 m AMSL. Cotopaxi is the highest volcanic mountain of the world (height being 19,613 feet). The other signifi­cant volcanoes are Fuziyama (Japan), Shasta, Rainier and Hood (western cordillera of North America), a valley of ten thousand smokes (Alaska), Mt St. Helens (Washington, USA), Kilavea (Hawaiiland), Mt. Taal, Pinatubo and Mayon (re-eruption in Feb. 2000) of Philippines etc.

Here volcanic eruptions are primarily caused due to collision of American and Pacific plates and due to subduction of Pacific plate below the Asiatic plate.

(ii) Mid-continental Belt:

Mid-continental belt is also known as ‘the vol­canic zones of convergent continental plate mergins’. This belt includes the volcanoes of Alpine mountain chains and the Mediterranean Sea and the volcanoes of fault zone of eastern Africa. Here, the volcanic erup­tions are caused due to convergence and collision of Eurasian plates and African and Indian plates.

The famous volcanoes of the Mediterranean Sea such as Stromboli, Visuvious, Etna etc. and the volcanoes of Aegean Sea are included in this belt. It may be pointed out that this belt does not have the continuity of volcanic eruptions as several gaps (volcanic-free zones) are found along the Alps and the Himalayas because of Compact and thick crust formed due to intense folding activity. The important volcanoes of the fault zone of eastern Africa are Kilimanjaro, Meru, Elgon, Birunga, Rung we etc.

(iii) Mid-Atlantic Belt:

Mid-Atlantic belt includes the volcanoes mainly along the mid-Atlantic ridge which represents the splitting zone of plates. In other words, two plates diverge in opposite directions from the mid-oceanic ridge. Thus, volcanoes mainly of fissure eruption type occur along the constructive or divergent plate mar­gins (boundaries).

The most active volcanic area is Iceland which is located on the mid-Atlantic ridge. This belt begins from Hekla volcanic mountain of Iceland where several fissure eruption type of volca­noes are found. It may be pointed out that since Iceland is located on the mid-Atlantic ridge representing the splitting zone of American plate moving westward and Eurasian plate moving eastward, and hence here is constant upwelling of magmas along the mid-oceanic ridge and wherever the crust becomes thin and weak, fissure flow of lava occurs because of fracture created due to divergence of plates.

The Laki fissure eruption of 1783 A.D. was so quick and enormous that huge volume of lavas measuring about 15 cubic kilometres was poured out from 28-km long fissure. Recently, Hekla and Helgafell volcanoes erupted in the year 1974 and 1973 respectively. Other more active volcanic areas are Lesser Antilles, Southern Antilles, Azores, St. Helena etc.

The dreadful and disastrous eruption of Mount Pelee occurred on May 8,1902 in the town of St. Pierre on the Martinique Island of West Indies in the Caribbean Sea. All the 28,000 inhabitants, except two persons, were killed by the killer volcanic eruption.

(iv) Intra-Plate Volcanoes:

Besides the aforesaid well defined three zones of volcanoes, scattered volca­noes are also found in the inner parts of the continents. Such distributional patterns of volcanoes are called as intraplate volcanoes, the mechanism of their eruption is not yet precisely known. Fig. 9.4 depicts the location of volcanoes of Pacific plate where one branch of volcanoes runs from Hawaii to Kamchatka.

Vulcanicity also becomes active in the inner parts of continental plates. Massive fissure eruption occurred in the north­western parts of North America during Miocene period when 1,00,000 cubic kilometres of basaltic lavas were spread over an area of 1,30,000 km 2 to form Columbian plateau. Similarly, great fissure flows of lavas covered more than 5,00,000 km 2 areas of Peninsular India. Parana of Barazil and Paraguay were formed due to spread of lavas over an area of 7,50,090 km 2 .

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Volcano Writing Prompts

These volcano writing prompts will provide your students with creative writing practice.

You can share these volcano writing prompts with your students.

They are written to get your students to recall what they have learned while creating a short story.

This is another free resource for teachers and home school families from The Curriculum Corner.

Volcano writing prompts

• Write a story about a group of explorers who stumble upon an undiscovered volcano. Describe the eruption and the explorers’ reaction to it.
• Imagine that you are a volcano that has just woken up after hundreds of years of dormancy. Write a first-person narrative describing your thoughts and feelings as you prepare to erupt.
• Write a letter to a friend describing the effects of a volcanic eruption on a nearby town. Use sensory language to vividly describe the sights, sounds, and smells of the aftermath.
• Create a dialogue between a group of scientists studying a volcano and a local resident who is skeptical of their findings. Use evidence and reasoning to convince the resident that the volcano poses a threat.
• Write a poem about the beauty and danger of volcanoes. Use imagery and figurative language to convey the power and majesty of these natural wonders.
• Write a diary entry from the perspective of a person living in a village that is in the path of a lava flow. Describe their feelings and actions as they try to evacuate and save their belongings.
• Write a news article about a volcanic eruption that recently occurred in a nearby town. Include quotes from eyewitnesses, local officials, and experts to provide a well-rounded account of the event.
• Create a persuasive essay arguing for or against the construction of a new hotel near a volcanic site. Consider the economic benefits, environmental impact, and potential risks involved.
• Imagine that you are a scientist studying a dormant volcano. Write a report explaining the signs that indicate that the volcano may become active soon, and what precautions should be taken.
• Write a short story from the point of view of a volcano. Describe the process of building up pressure and erupting, and how the volcano affects the landscape and the creatures around it.

You can download a printable version of these prompts by clicking on the green apples below. The first two pages contain the prompts on strips so that you can print and have students choose one. The last page contains a list of the prompts. Students can be given the whole page. Or, you can display the page on your screen.

As with all of our resources, The Curriculum Corner creates these for free classroom use. Our products may not be sold. You may print and copy for your personal classroom use. These are also great for home school families!

You may not modify and resell in any form. Please let us know if you have any questions.

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Essay On The Volcano – 10 Lines, Short & Long Essay For Kids

Key Points To Remember When Writing An Essay On The Volcano For Lower Primary Classes

10 lines on the volcano for kids, a paragraph on the volcano for children, short essay on volcano in 200 words for kids, long essay on volcano for children, interesting facts about volcanoes for children, what will your child learn from this essay.

A volcano is a mountain formed through an opening on the Earth’s surface and pushes out lava and rock fragments through that. It is a conical mass that grows large and is found in different sizes. Volcanoes in Hawaiian islands are more than 4000 meters above sea level, and sometimes the total height of a volcano may exceed 9000 meters, depending on the region it is found. Here you will know and learn how to write an essay on a volcano for classes 1, 2 & 3 kids. We will cover writing tips for your essay on a volcano in English and some fun facts about volcanoes in general.

Volcanoes are formed as a result of natural phenomena on the Earth’s surface. There are several types of volcanoes, and each may emit multiple gases. Below are some key points to remember when writing an essay on a volcano:

• Start with an introduction about how volcanoes are formed. How they impact the Earth, what they produce, and things to watch out for.
• Discuss the different types of volcanoes and talk about the differences between them.
• Cover the consequences when volcanoes erupt and the extent of the damage on Earth.
• Write a conclusion paragraph for your essay and summarise it. 

When writing a few lines on a volcano, it’s crucial to state interesting facts that children will remember. Below are 10 lines on volcanoes for an essay for classes 1 & 2 kids.

• Some volcanoes erupt in explosions, and then some release magma quietly.
• Lava is hot and molten red in colour and cools down to become black in colour. 
• Hot gases trapped inside the Earth are released when a volcano erupts.
• A circle of volcanoes is referred to as the ‘Ring of Fire.’
• Volcano formations are known as seismic activities.
• Active volcanoes are spread all across the earth. 
• Volcanoes can remain inactive for thousands of years and suddenly erupt.
• Most volcanic eruptions occur underwater and result from plates diverging from the margins.
• Volcanic hazards happen in the form of ashes, lava flows, ballistics, etc.
• Volcanic regions have turned into tourist attractions such as the ones in Hawaii.

Volcanoes can be spotted at the meeting points of tectonic plates. Like this, there are tons of interesting facts your kids can learn about volcanoes. Here is a short paragraph on a volcano for children:

A volcano can be defined as an opening in a planet through which lava, gases, and molten rock come out. Earthquake activity around a volcano can give plenty of insight into when it will erupt. The liquid inside a volcano is called magma (lava), which can harden. The Roman word for the volcano is ‘vulcan,’ which means God of Fire. Earth is not the only planet in the solar system with volcanoes; there is one on Mars called the Olympus Mons. There are mainly three types of volcanoes: active, dormant, and extinct. Some eruptions are explosive, and some happen as slow-flowing lava.

Small changes occur in volcanoes, determining if the magma is rising or not flowing enough. One of the common ways to forecast eruptions is by analysing the summit and slopes of these formations. Below is a short essay for classes 1, 2, & 3:

As a student, I have always been curious about volcanoes, and I recently studied a lot about them. Do you know? Krakatoa is a volcano that made an enormous sound when it exploded. Maleo birds seek refuge in the soil found near volcanoes, and they also bury their eggs in these lands as it keeps the eggs warm. Lava salt is a popular condiment used for cooking and extracted from volcanic rocks. And it is famous for its health benefits and is considered superior to other forms of rock or sea salts. Changes in natural gas composition in volcanoes can predict how explosive an eruption can be. A volcano is labelled active if it constantly generates seismic activity and releases magma, and it is considered dormant if it has not exploded for a long time. Gas bubbles can form inside volcanoes and blow up to 1000 times their original size!

Volcanic eruptions can happen through small cracks on the Earth’s surface, fissures, and new landforms. Poisonous gases and debris get mixed with the lava released during these explosions. Here is a long essay for class 3 kids on volcanoes:

Lava can come in different forms, and this is what makes volcanoes unique. Volcanic eruptions can be dangerous and may lead to loss of life, damaging the environment. Lava ejected from a volcano can be fluid, viscous, and may take up different shapes. 

When pressure builds up below the Earth’s crust due to natural gases accumulating, that’s when a volcanic explosion happens. Lava and rocks are shot out from the surface to make room on the seafloor. Volcanic eruptions can lead to landslides, ash formations, and lava flows, called natural disasters. Active volcanoes frequently erupt, while the dormant ones are unpredictable. Thousands of years can pass until dormant volcanoes erupt, making their eruption unpredictable. Extinct volcanoes are those that have never erupted in history.

The Earth is not the only planet in the solar system with volcanoes. Many volcanoes exist on several other planets, such as Mars, Venus, etc. Venus is the one planet with the most volcanoes in our solar system. Extremely high temperatures and pressure cause rocks in the volcano to melt and become liquid. This is referred to as magma, and when magma reaches the Earth’s surface, it gets called lava. On Earth, seafloors and common mountains were born from volcanic eruptions in the past.

What Is A Volcano And How Is It Formed?

A volcano is an opening on the Earth’s crust from where molten lava, rocks, and natural gases come out. It is formed when tectonic plates shift or when the ocean plate sinks. Volcano shapes are formed when molten rock, ash, and lava are released from the Earth’s surface and solidify.

Types Of Volcanoes

Given below various types of volcanoes –

1. Shield Volcano

It has gentle sliding slopes and ejects basaltic lava. These are created by the low-viscosity lava eruption that can reach a great distance from a vent.

2. Composite Volcano (Strato)

A composite volcano can stand thousands of meters tall and feature mudflow and pyroclastic deposits.

3. Caldera Volcano

When a volcano explodes and collapses, a large depression is formed, which is called the Caldera.

4. Cinder Cone Volcano

It’s a steep conical hill formed from hardened lava, tephra, and ash deposits.

Causes Of Volcano Eruptions

Following are the most common causes of volcano eruptions:

1. Shifting Of Tectonic Plates

When tectonic plates slide below one another, water is trapped, and pressure builds up by squeezing the plates. This produces enough heat, and gases rise in the chambers, leading to an explosion from underwater to the surface.

2. Environmental Conditions

Sometimes drastic changes in natural environments can lead to volcanoes becoming active again.

3. Natural Phenomena

We all understand that the Earth’s mantle is very hot. So, the rock present in it melts due to high temperature. This thin lava travels to the crust as it can float easily. As the area’s density is compromised, the magma gets to the surface and explodes.

How Does Volcano Affect Human Life?

Active volcanoes threaten human life since they often erupt and affect the environment. It forces people to migrate far away as the amount of heat and poisonous gases it emits cannot be tolerated by humans.

Here are some interesting facts:

• The lava is extremely hot!
• The liquid inside a volcano is known as magma. The liquid outside is called it is lava.
• The largest volcano in the solar system is found on Mars.
• Mauna Loa in Hawaii is the largest volcano on Earth.
• Volcanoes are found where tectonic plates meet and move.

Your child will learn a lot about how Earth works and why volcanoes are classified as natural disasters, what are their types and how they are formed.

Now that you know enough about volcanoes, you can start writing the essay. For more information on volcanoes, be sure to read and explore more.

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Indonesians leave homes near erupting volcano and airport closes due to ash danger

Indonesia Volcano Eruptions In this photo released by Sitaro Regional Disaster Management Agency (BPBD Sitaro), hot molten lava glows at the crater of Mount Ruang as it erupts in Sanguine Islands, Indonesia, Wednesday, April 17, 2024. Indonesian authorities issued a tsunami alert Wednesday after eruptions at Ruang mountain sent ash thousands of feet high. Officials ordered more than 11,000 people to leave the area. (BPBD Sitaro via AP) (Uncredited/AP)

MANADO, Indonesia — (AP) — Indonesian authorities closed an airport and residents left homes near an erupting volcano Thursday due to the dangers of spreading ash, falling rocks, hot volcanic clouds and the possibility of a tsunami.

Mount Ruang on the northern side of Sulawesi Island had at least five large eruptions Wednesday , causing the Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation to issue its highest-level alert, indicating an active eruption.

The crater emitted white-gray smoke continuously during the day Thursday, reaching more than 500 meters (1,600 feet) above the peak.

People have been ordered to stay at least 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) from the 725-meter (2,378 foot) mountain. More than 11,000 people live in the affected area and were told to leave. At least 800 have done so.

An international airport in Manado city was temporarily closed Thursday as volcanic ash was spewed into the air.

“We have to close flight operations at Sam Ratulangi Airport due to the spread of volcanic ash, which could endanger flight safety,” said Ambar Suryoko, head of the regional airport authority.

Eruptions Wednesday evening spewed volcanic ash approximately 70,000 feet into the atmosphere, according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology’s Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre. The bureau said in a statement Thursday it was tracking and forecasting the ash dispersion.

Indonesia's volcanology center noted the risks from the volcanic eruption include the possibility that part of the volcano could collapse into the sea and cause a tsunami. In December 2018, Indonesia's Anak Krakatau volcano island erupted and collapsed , losing around 3/4 its volume and triggering a powerful tsunami that killed more than 400 people. An 1871 eruption at Mount Ruang also triggered a tsunami.

Tagulandang Island, east of the Ruang volcano, could be at risk if a collapse occurred. Its residents were among those being told to evacuate.

“People who live in the Tagulandang Island area and are within a 6-kilometer radius must be immediately evacuated to a safe place outside the 6-kilometer radius," Abdul Muhari, spokesperson of the National Disaster Mitigation Agency, said Thursday. “And especially those who live near the coast should be aware of the potential for incandescent rocks to erupt, hot clouds and tsunami waves that could be triggered by the collapse of a volcanic body into the sea.”

The agency said residents will be relocated to Manado, the nearest city, on Sulawesi island — a six-hour journey by boat.

Indonesia , an archipelago of 270 million people, has 120 active volcanoes. It is prone to volcanic activity because it sits along the "Ring of Fire," a horseshoe-shaped series of seismic fault lines around the Pacific Ocean.

AP writer Rod McGuirk contributed from Sydney.

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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