ADI Lab Report

The Yellowstone volcano is very active volcanic system which requires much observation. The geysers, mudd pots, hotsprings and steam vents are all examples of the heat from molten rock of a volcano. For many years the Yellowstone volcano could not be located. There is not obvious signs of a volcano, but scientists looked for other clues. Rhyolite is present in a location that has pinetress and many mosquitoes can be found due to the lakes that have formed. Rhyolite is a very violent eruption, due to the high silica content,  it flows slowly, like honey, and tends to pile up and form lava

Stratovolcano and Shield volcanos are naturally occurring ruptures in the earth’s crust. They have been a part of our history for nearly 6,000 years and some say that they have been around longer than dinosaurs. While these events are rather cool to watch, they are known to be some of the most devastating natural disasters known to man. Volcanic hazards and eruptions continue to happen throughout the entire world and crisis aversion is something that is becoming more and more important.

A hazard is a situation that poses a level of threat tolife, health, property or environment. The level of hazard posed by different volcanoes can very greatly, from a weak eruption with minimal impact that causes little damage, to a voilent and life threatening explosion. Most of the sixty-plus volcanoes that erupt each year are low risk, however a combination of factors can cause a volcano to be a serious hazard. The factors causing these variations will be explained in this essay.

In the ADI Molarity Lab, the primary tasks was to use different values of moles of solute, volume of solvent, and molarity to find the mathematical relationships between them. To find these relationships, our group had to change the quantities of each of the variables and visually observe the molarity within the solution. For instance when using Cobalt (II) Nitrate to find the relationship between volume of the solution and the molarity of the solution; the group kept the amount of moles of the solute at a constant of 1.00 moles because if it would have changed it would have caused inaccurate data. We first set the volume of the solution to 0.2 liters. The molarity of the solution was 5.00 mol/L. Then we changed the volume of the solution

The youngest of these rocks are dated at about 220,000 years ago. Rhyodacties and quartz latites in the modern caldera area extruded from about 320,000 years ago to 260,000 years ago, and then silica-rich rhyolites at Glass Mountain northeast of the caldera erupted from about 210,000 years ago to 80,000 years ago. The scattered distribution of the initial mafic eruptions indicates that they were erupted from the mantle, while the slightly younger domes and flows were from a deep-crustal source. The youngest rhyolite eruptions erupted at the northeast rim of the caldera at Glass Mountain and were the first activity of the silicic Long Valley magma chamber (Bailey, et. al., 1989).

Data collection and sources; the data used in this study comes from Azzalin and Bowman(1990). It includes a data frame with 272 observations on 2 variables that is eruption time and waiting time. The data is heavily rounded times originally in seconds.

Using a certain tool, they looked literally at the light in the sky to see the presence of Sulfur Dioxide, and how much exactly there was. Their assumption was that the gas levels would rise with the closer coming of the eruption; they were wrong though, as Earthquakes seemed to be getting stronger and the levels of Sulfur Dioxide did not rise at all. They got another clue that the volcano was going to erupt in late April though, when they began to realize that a large bulge was growing on the side of the volcano, almost like a cyst. By May 11th, though, they had realized that within the short amount of time they were studying it, that the bulge had moved outward 450 feet, & without completely knowing, it was hypothesized that the bulge was being created by lava, forcing itself against the volcanoes

In comparison to shield volcanoes, a composite volcano is a lot more explosive making the responses to it very different. Within a composite volcano pressure builds up within the cone, resulting in violent explosions of pyroclastic materials from the volcano’s vents. An example of this is Mount St Helens a composite volcano which tends to erupt explosively and pose considerable danger to nearby life and property. The force of the explosion caused the north face of the mountain to collapse and devastated a huge area of forest around the volcano. Fifty seven people died in the eruption and 2,000 people were forced to flee their homes. Some of these numbers were taken from Wikipedia, which is not peer assessed so the data may be estimates or incorrect, however they were checked against other more reliable sources such as the national-geographic website, which is a lot more reliable. In conclusion the type of hazard has a big effect on the human responses to it. The difference between being an earthquake or a volcano can have big effects to the responses. Earthquakes can be more difficult to predict than volcanoes and some earthquakes are more unexpected than others, making the responses very different. Different types of volcano will affect the response because different volcanoes have different effects. For example the difference between the shield and composite volcanoes, which can make all the difference to the response to the hazard.

The different types of eruptions that come from the volcanoes that stretch across Io play a significant role in its volcanology. There are three popular types of eruptions that occur on Io. These are: flow dominated, explosion dominated, and Intra-patera eruptions. Flow dominated eruptions “produce extensive compound lava flow fields… similar to compound inflationary flows commonly observed on Hawaiian eruptions on Earth” (Lopes 2015). These flows make up a major terrain type on Io. Many of the major flows are produced by build ups of small breakouts of lava on top of older flows. They differ from the other popular eruptions because they can last for years, have a low output of energy, and can have flow fields larger than 300 kilometers. The opposite of this style of eruption is explosion dominated eruptions. Where “most of the energy of the eruption is directed into a short-lived, vigorous event that lasts days to weeks… can produce extensive pyroclastic deposits and lava flow fields, and typically a large (>200 km high) plume, thought to originate from the interaction of silicate magma with sulfurous volatiles” (Lopes 2015). These eruptions occur when magma deep within Io’s molten mantle reaches the surface and cause alterations in the near-infrared brightness. They also have the potential to cause colossal short lived changes around them. For example, in 1997 an eruption produced a 400 kilometer wide deposit of silicate and sulfur dioxide. The powerful eruption in recorded history was explosion dominated and observed by astronomers on February 22, 2001. The most common of the three eruption types, Intra-patera eruptions, “occur with or without associated plumes, and are thought to be lava lakes” (Lopes 2015). Generally they have flat floors and steep walls. Unlike features that are similar on Earth they are usually not located at the peak of a shield volcano. Their

Some supporting evidence the author uses that I find convincing is statistics about the magma, which was used to describe about potentially dangerous the magma could be. The author says the magma came “…from the Earth's mantle more than 12 miles (20 kilometers) underground…”, that the plume was 3 miles deep, and that the temperature was”…more than 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit (1,200 degrees Celsius).” These statistics about the volcano are convincing because these statistics can be proved and are not opinion. These statistics also help in proving his main idea.

This was the earliest stage of eruption and it produced 15 lava fountains that shot up 150 meters above the vent. These fountains were later concentrated into 5 fountains. March 30th recorded a new eruption phase. A very viscous and slowing moving Basalt lava flow began moving from the vents covering an area of roughly 1 square km before breaking off into two streams and spilling of the ridge. The next day, March 31st a new fissure opened in an area that was covered with snow. The 400 meter fissure produced several lava fountains, steam columns and explosions. On April 7th the original fissure stops its activity but four other vents continue to erupt large amounts of lava producing lava rivers that would flow into the nearby gorge. Also during this time earthquakes were recorded measuring 2.0 to 3.5 magnitudes, a possible signal of a new pattern of eruption. On April 14th there is another opening of a new fissure. This new fissure was located at the summit caldera and it was under 300 meters of ice. This produced two flash floods that discharged 1,500 to 2,000 cubic meters per second of melted

What are the properties/ characteristics of the rock? (With links to formation): It is a mafic extrusive (formed when magma makes its way to the earth’s surface) rock. It contains more than 90% of all volcanic rocks. Due to its low silica content basalt lava has a comparatively low viscosity,

Subsequent research focusing more solely on the San Pedro Pellado Volcanic Complex by Davidson, Ferguson, Colucci, and Dungan (1988) provides evidence that some degree of crustal assimilation has had an impact on the evolution of magmas in the volcanic complex. The evidence for this is the high δ^18O observed in fresh non-glassy rock units. Taylor and Sheppard (1986) argue that the differences in characteristics among rock units of the complex cannot be explained by the closed system fractionalization of an unaltered mantle melt. The concentrations of the oxygen isotopes suggest that the magmas that formed these igneous rocks have undergone some contamination with a crustal component containing a higher concentration of 18O (Davidson et al., 1988). The occasional presence of granitic xenoliths in the lavas and tuffs, such as the Pellado unit, are also indicative of some level of crustal contamination. These xenoliths are enriched in large ion lithophiles and have similar concentrations of REE as the underlying basement material and are therefore believed to be pieces of the underlying basement of the volcanic complex (Davidson et al., 1988). For the granites to be included into the melts as they rise through the crustal material indicates there is some degree of interaction between melts and crustal material.

The initial rocks are very ultramafic and as time goes on they became more felsic. The magma during the formation of the ultramafic to mafic rocks the magma becomes more felsic until these rocks stop forming. This is because compatible elements were crystallizing into minerals. These minerals then made up rocks after each step finished. Slowly the minerals and rocks formed became more felsic and the melt became less felsic. It will continue to get less felsic until all the magma has crystallized. For example, we went from Dunite (step1) all the way to Granodiorite(step ten). Dunite was very ultramafic while Granodiorite was more felsic since it had more silica in it. The last melt could have formed a Quartzolite or a Quartz-rich Granitoid depending on how much silica, alkaline feldspars, and plagioclase was left. Silica was the most abundant element in the melt so therefore the percentage of it in the melt remained high even after a decent amount of it had been removed. For example, at the end of step six there was still 125 silica atoms left in the melt. The steps that created ultramafic rocks were steps one through six since they had olivine, plagioclase, and pyroxenes in them. The mafic rocks were created in steps seven and eight since they had no olivine or felsic minerals in them, but still had pyroxene and plagioclase in them. The steps nine and ten created felsic rocks since they had felsic minerals (quartz and Alkali feldspars) as well as the mafic minerals in

Thermodynamic modeling on major elements using the MELTS program (Ghiorso and Sack, 1995) has been made in order to evaluate potential fractional crystallization processes in the felsic magmatism. The evolution of Al2O3 and MgO contents closely matches the whole rock data, when modeled with a pressure of 2 kbar, a water content of 2 wt.% and fO2 at QFM + 1, in which crystallizations of amphibole, biotite, muscovite, feldspar and quartz are considered. However, CaO, FeO, and TiO2 deviate from the observed rock compositions. These discrepancies could be due to the limitations of the MELTS program when applied to