Volcano Research Project
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Apr. 4
Devils Post Piles:
What? Where? How?
Devils Tower (Lakota: Mato Tipila, which means “Bear Lodge”) is a monolithic igneous
intrusion or volcanic neck located in the Black Hills near Hulett and Sundance in Crook
County, northeastern Wyoming, above the Belle Fourche River. It rises dramatically
1,267 feet (386 m) above the surrounding terrain and the summit is 5,112 feet (1,558 m)
above sea level.
Devils Tower was the first declared United States National Monument, established on
September 24, 1906, by President Theodore Roosevelt. The Monument's boundary
encloses an area of 1,347 acres (5.45 km2).
In recent years about 1% of the Monument's 400,000 annual visitors climb Devils
Tower, mostly through traditional climbing techniques.[1]
Devils Tower National Monument
IUCN Category III (Natural Monument)
Devils Tower, 1900
Volcano Research Project
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Apr. 4
Devils Tower: What? Where? How?
Tribes including the Arapaho, Crow, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Lakota, and Shoshone had
cultural and geographical ties to the monolith before European and early American
immigrants reached Wyoming. Their names for the monolith include: Aloft on a Rock
(Kiowa), Bear's House (Cheyenne, Crow), Bear's Lair (Cheyenne, Crow), Bear's Lodge
(Cheyenne, Lakota), Bear's Lodge Butte (Lakota), Bear's Tipi (Arapaho, Cheyenne),
Tree Rock (Kiowa), and Grizzly Bear Lodge (Lakota).
The name Devil's Tower originated in 1875 during an expedition led by Col. Richard
Irving Dodge when his interpreter misinterpreted the name to mean Bad God's Tower.
This was later shortened to the Devil's Tower.[2] All information signs in that area use
the name "Devils Tower", following a geographic naming standard whereby the
apostrophe is eliminated
Caldera: What? How formed?
A caldera is a cauldron-like volcanic feature usually formed by the collapse of land
following a volcanic eruption, such as the one at Yellowstone National Park in the US.
They are sometimes confused with volcanic craters. The word comes from Spanish
caldera, and this from Latin CALDARIA, meaning "cooking pot". In some texts the
English term cauldron is also used.
In 1815, the German geologist Leopold von Buch visited the Las Cañadas caldera of
Teide on Tenerife, and the Caldera de Taburiente on La Palma, both in the Canary
Islands. When he published his memoirs he introduced the term caldera into the
geological vocabulary
Volcano Research Project
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Apr. 4
Lava plateaus are formed by the large outpourings of fluid lava from long narrow
openings in the crust. During each eruption, the lava flows out from these openings,
solidifies and builds up layer upon layer each time.
A pretty good example will be the Columbia Plateau in the USA.
Volcano Research Project
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Apr. 4
Hot Spot: Inter-plate Volcanic Activity?
What?
How?
Where?
Although most volcanic rocks are generated at plate boundaries, there are a few
exceptionally active sites of volcanism within the plate interiors. These intraplate regions
of voluminous volcanism are called hotspots. Twenty-four selected hotspots are shown
on the adjacent map. Most hotspots are thought to be underlain by a large plume of
anomalously hot mantle. These mantle plumes appear to be generated in the lower
mantle and rise slowly through the mantle by convection. Experimental data suggests
that they rise as a plastically deforming mass that has a bulbous plume head fed by a
long, narrow plume tail. As the head impinges on the base of the lithosphere, it spreads
outward into a mushroom shape. Such plume heads are thought to have diameters
between ~500 to ~1000 km.
Most Dangerous Volcano? Where
Volcano Research Project
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Apr. 4
A recent PBS documentary identified Kilauea, on the island of Hawaii, as “The Most
Dangerous Volcano in the World.” A curious choice, in my opinion, for any rating of a
volcano's danger must take into account both the intrinsic hazard and the number of
lives at risk.
Eruptions of Kilauea are certainly spectacular. Its cherry-red lava flows and roaring lava
fountains are impressive, especially when seen at night. But relatively few people have
been killed by Kilauea's lava, because it is usually possible for people to get out of its
path. The one major fatality at Kilauea was caused by a steam explosion. In 1794, lavaheated groundwater killed a troop of soldiers marching past the caldera. But such
explosions at Kilauea are rare. Therefore, Hawaiian volcanism is a fairly gentle sort of
thing.
All volcanoes pose a danger to volcanologists, and I personally rate Grimsvatn in
Iceland as most hazardous. Why? Because I fell into its caldera barely escaping with
my life (see sidebar, “Bill & The Volcano”.) The volcano lies buried under an ice sheet
500 meters thick. Its eruptions can melt enormous volumes of ice. In 1996, gigantic
floods were caused by an eruption that liquefied six cubic kilometers of solid water.
Fortunate for Icelanders, the floods make their way from the volcano to the sea through
an uninhabited region.
The Three Big Ones
The last three volcanic eruptions to cause major loss of life were Krakatoa, Indonesia,
where 32,000 were killed in 1883; Mt. Pelee, Martinique, where 29,000 were killed in
1902; and Nevada del Ruiz, Colombia, where 23,000 were killed in 1985. Fiery lava was
not the culprit in any of these disasters.
Krakatoa, a small island, exploded catastrophically. The resulting sea wave washed
whole villages on nearby Java and Sumatra away. A cloud of super-heated rock
particles and poisonous gases known as a pyroclastic eruption rushed down the
volcano's slope destroying the town of Saint-Pierre on Martinique. Unlike lava, it travels
so fast that it cannot be outrun.
Like Grimsvatn, Nevada del Ruiz in the Andes Mountains is also covered by a glacier. A
small eruption melted part of this ice, and the melt water produced a mud flow that
inundated the town of Armero, located in a valley below the volcano. Interestingly, none
of these three volcanoes had been active in the century prior to their eruption, although
all had some historic activity.
The eruptions of Ruiz and Pelee were moderate-to-large in size, not gigantic. Their
effects were confined to a ten-to-twenty kilometer radius around the volcano. The large
death toll was the result of a moderate hazard combined with a moderately sized town.
Most Active? Where? Many volcanoes have been in continuous eruption for decades.
Etna, Stromboli, and Yasur have been erupting for hundreds or thousands of years.
The following 4 volcanoes emit the most lava. Kilauea (Hawaii), Mt Etna (Italy), Piton de
la Fournaise (Réunion), Nyamuragira, (D.R. Congo)
Volcano Research Project
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Apr. 4
Largest Volcano on Earth? Where?
The largest volcano on earth is Mauna Loa on Hawai'i Big Island. It is a massive
shieldvolcano constructed by countless lava flows. When measured from the base to
the top, the pile of lavas measures more than 17,000 m (56,000 ft)!
When measured from the sea floor, Mauna Loa's height is still more than 9,000 m, thus
it is also the highest mountain on earth. Mauna Loa in fact is so heavy, that its
weight has bent the oceanic crust under the volcano several kilometers downwards into
the mantle.
Mauna Loa is one of the Earth's most active volcanoes, with 33 well-documented
eruptions in historic times since 1843. Its last eruption was in 1984 and since
2004, Mauna Loa is showing increasing signs of a possible awakening in a not-toodistant future.
The largest volcano on earth is Mauna Loa on Hawai'i Big Island. It is a massive
shieldvolcano constructed by countless lava flows. When measured from the base to
the top, the pile of lavas measures more than 17,000 m (56,000 ft)!
.
Largest Volcano in our Solar System? What kind? A volcano is an opening, or rupture,
in a planet's surface or crust, which allows hot magma, volcanic ash and gases to
escape from below the surface.
Volcano Research Project
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Apr. 4
Volcanoes are generally found where tectonic plates are diverging or converging. A
mid-oceanic ridge, for example the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, has examples of volcanoes
caused by divergent tectonic plates pulling apart; the Pacific Ring of Fire has examples
of volcanoes caused by convergent tectonic plates coming together. By contrast,
volcanoes are usually not created where two tectonic plates slide past one another.
Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching and thinning of the Earth's crust in
the interiors of plates, e.g., in the East African Rift, the Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic
field and the Rio Grande Rift in North America. This type of volcanism falls under the
umbrella of "Plate hypothesis" volcanism.[1]
Intraplate volcanism has also been postulated to be caused by mantle plumes. These
so-called "hotspots", for example Hawaii, are postulated to arise from upwelling diapirs
from the core-mantle boundary, 3,000 km deep in the Earth
The Volcano is named after?
(Roman God) Volcano is the application about
volcano. A volcano is an opening, or rupture, in a planet's surface or crust, which allows
hot magma, ash and gases to escape from below the surface. Main Feature: 1) About
volcano 2) Etymology 3) Plate tectonics & Hotspots - Divergent plate boundaries Convergent plate boundaries - Hotspots 4) Volcanic features 5) Erupted Material - Lava
composition - Lava texture 6) Volcano Activity - Scientific Classification - Popular
Classification - Extinct - Dormant 7) Effects of volcanoes 8) Volcanoes on other
planetary
3 kinds of Pyroclastic materials? Size? Volcanic hazards are threats to life and/or
infrastructure due to volcanic activity.
According to John Ewert and Ed Miller in a 1995 publication, "a great majority of the
world's potentially active volcanoes are unmonitored". Of the historically active
volcanoes in the world, less than one fourth are monitored. Only twenty-four volcanoes
in the entire world are thoroughly monitored for activity. They also state that "seventyfive percent of the largest explosive eruptions since 1800 occurred at volcanoes that
had no previous historical eruptions