APPLICATIONS & INVESTIGATIONS IN EARTH SCIENCE
NAME: ______________________________
EXERCISE 2
CLASS: ______________________________
RESPONSE FORM
DATE: ______________________________
1) To help keep you informed, examine the information at the EarthWeek website and prepare a short review of the
recent geologic events that have occurred on Earth.
2) Associated with igneous rocks are volcanoes and volcanic hazards. Investigate the home page of VolcanoWorld
and prepare a short report on any currently erupting volcanoes. You may also find this United States Geological
Survey (USGS) site useful.
a)
List and describe some hazards that are associated with volcanoes.
b) What rock will most likely be formed from a volcanic eruption?
3) To help you gain a better understanding of volcanoes and volcanic hazards, complete the Mt. Rainier interactive
learning module at this University of Colorado GeographyWeb Lessons site.
You may also find this United States Geological Survey (USGS) report on Mt. Rainier informative.
After you finish your investigation, write a brief summary of your experience.
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4) As you will see in later exercises, atmospheric carbon dioxide is a major heat absorber, and excessive amounts
added to the atmosphere by human activities are believed to be a major contributor to global warming.
Completing the following will help you gain insight into the complexity of the problem.
Dwarfing Mt. St.. Helens, the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo (see Report) in the Philippines was the second largest
volcanic eruption of the twentieth century, producing approximately 10 billion cubic meters of ash.
a)
If the average density of the Mt Pinatubo ash was 2,000 kg/m3, what was the approximate total weight of
ash produced by the eruption?
b) If we assume the gas content of the magma was 1 percent of the mass of ash produced, what
was the weight of all the gas emitted by Pinatubo?
c)
Water vapor is the dominant volcanic gas produced by most volcanoes, and usually the second
most abundant is carbon dioxide (CO2). For Pinatubo, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates the CO 2
content at 15% of the total gas produced. What is the approximate weight of CO 2 from the Pinatubo
eruption?
d) Total human-produced CO2 is approximately 8,000 million tons per year. What percentage of this
number is the CO2 content produced by the Pinatubo eruption? (NOTE: 1 ton  2,000 lb)
Write a brief assessment of your analysis of the carbon dioxide produced by the Pinatubo eruption compared to
the annual human-produced emissions of the gas.