Mount St Helen Case Study

The side of mt st Helens has been blown off by the force of the blast and trees have been demolished buy the rocks crashing at them

The west coast of North America has been tectonically and volcanically active for billions of years. The Sierra Nevada Mountains in eastern California were born of volcanoes, and magma has been erupting in the Long Valley to the east of the mountains for over three million years (Bailey, et. al., 1989). However, the climactic eruption of the region occurred relatively recently in the region's geologic history. About 760,000 years ago, a huge explosion of magma warped the Eastern Sierra into the landscape that exists today. The eruption depleted a massive magma chamber below the earth's surface so that the ceiling of the chamber imploded, forming what is now known as

Bagley, Mary. “Mount St. Helens Eruption: Facts & Information.” LiveScience, Purch, 28 Feb. 2013, www.livescience.com/27553-mount-st-helens-eruption.html

USDA - US Forest Service - AEM (n.d.). Mount St. Helens Research. Retrieved September 17, 2013, from

Mount St. Helen is a very active volcano classified as a stratovolcano, stratovolcano is basically a tall volcano built up of layer after layer of hard lava, tephra, pumice, and volcanic ash. Mount St. Helens location is in Skamania County in Washington, with coordinates of 46 12'00.17"N122 11'21.13"W. Mount St Helen is famous because of its catastrophic eruption on May eighteenth in nineteen eighty. The eruption measured a five on the volcanic explosivity index. This is an index created by Chris Newell and Steven Self in the year nineteen eighty-two it was designed to try and measure the explosiveness of volcano eruptions to determine the value of the explosivity and qualitative observations ranging from zero to eight, eight being the

May 18, 1980 was a day that dawned sunny and beautiful. Mt. St. Helens stood out beautifully against the blue sky. The mountain had been rumbling quite a bit the past few days, and geologists were watching it carefully and monitoring vibrations. There had been a series of earthquakes from around March 12, up until present day. Over 170 earthquakes hit that were higher that 2.5 on the Richter scale in that short period of time. The earth shook with an earthquake that hit 5.0 on the Richter scale, at around 8:32 in the morning. That did it. Mount St. Helens blew apart with the force of over 500 times more powerful than the atomic bomb. The lateral blast traveled at over 300 miles an hour, and destroyed 230 square miles of forest in just 3 minutes.

Mount Mazama and Crater Lake: Growth and Destruction of a Cascade Volcano U.S. Geological Survey Fact Sheet 092-02

Volcanoes are some of the most powerful natural forces known to man. Volcanoes usually form at divergent and convergent boundaries. Sometimes they form in the middle of plates where magma fights through the crust. By understanding volcanoes, scientists get a window to the inside of the Earth. They can also study volcanoes to perhaps get closer to predicting eruptions in the future. One of Earth’s volcanoes is Clear Lake. Clear Lake has unique characteristics such as its location, how it forms, and how it erupts. It had erupted in the past with the potential to erupt again.

Lately, much open consideration has concentrated on the way that Yellowstone sits with on leg on each side of one of the world's biggest dynamic volcanic frameworks. Addresses routinely emerge as to the probability of a volcanic emission in Yellowstone and the effect of such an ejection.

The blast was preceded by two months of intense activity that included over 10,000 earthquakes, hundreds of small phreatic (steam blasts) , explosions and the north side bulge. A magnitude 5.1 earthquake below the volcano at 8:32 am started the eruption. MSH is still a potentially dangerous and active volcano even though it has been quiet since 1995. In the last 515 years there have been four major eruptions and dozens of lesser eruptions. Two of the eruptions were only two years apart. In 1480, the eruption was about five times larger than the one in May 1980. There have been even larger eruptions during MSH' 50,000 year lifetime. After the May 18, 1980 eruption, there have been five smaller explosive eruptions over a five month period. Since then, there have been 16 dome building eruptions through October 1986 when the new dome in the crater was formed. As the mountain was torn open, the pressure in inside was suddenly relieved. The rock shattered inside the mountain was exploded out the top at speeds over 200 miles per hour. The blast was so strong that it leveled whole forest of fir trees. Geologist call this a "stone wind" since the winds carried the rocks form the blast with them. The rocks gave the winds extra force that let them flatten the trees. 150 square miles of land was leveled. The edges of this area also lost their forested areas from the heat of the blast and the fires it caused. The original blast of the

In this report, we will talk about Mount St. Helens and how it is related to volcanoes. In the video about Mount St. Helens, geologists let us know why Mount St. Helen’s is the most deadly volcanic blast in the U.S. Mount St. Helens is a large eruptive cone and is a type of composite volcano that the volcano is composed of many layers of volcanic rocks. The video starts by informing us that this volcano is one of the biggest landslides. In addition, it let us know that volcanoes are dangerous and deadly because they are so hard to predict. Mount St. Helens is located in Washington State and forms part of the Cascade Mountain Range at the North American West Coast.

Chapter 3, as well as the article “A Fresh Look at Mount St. Helens” is very interesting. Chapter 3, section 1 covers the Earth as a system, the structure of the Earth, and Earth affects like earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions like the one on May 18th, 1980 in Washington State. Mount St. Helens was once covered with vegetation and small ponds. It has been nearly thirty years since one of the largest eruptions ever observed. The explosion blew the side of Mount St. Helens and lasted nine hours. This article relates to chapter three a lot. This volcanic eruption transformed the landscape and environment extremely. Mount St. Helen was once 9,677 feet tall and after the violent eruption it trimmed 400 meters off the top.This eruption damaged enough

Intense earthquake activity persisted during this time and aerial observations indicated that the earthquakes had induced small avalanches of snow and ice. As early as March 31st, volcanic tremors had begun to be observed on seismographs. Volcanic tremor is a continuous, rhythmic ground shaking that is generally longer in duration and more continuous than that produced by an earthquake of similar amplitude. As a result of these data, scientists believed that a magma eruption from Mount St. Helens was very likely (Mounsthelens.com, 2014). However, no eruptive activity was observed between late April and early May at which time small steam blast eruptions began again. These ceased on May 16th. During this time, the north face of the volcano was becoming distended and cracks were appearing. The "bulge" grew at a rate of about 1.5 metres per day to more than 135m higher than before the magma intrusion. The bulge eventually collapsed and triggered the eruption and subsequent events of May 18, 1980. See Figure 3 for a diagrammatic representation of the sequence of events.

Would it be cool or frightening or both to live 1 or more miles from a stratovolcano. Well to me living next to a stratovolcano would in fact be both cool and terrifying at the same time. In the next four paragraphs, i was be talking about Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Vesuvius and what they have in common.

We have decided to name our volcano, Mt B.I.G. Our volcano is a composite volcano just like. Mt st helens. Mt st helens is located in skamania washington. Its also like Mt Fuji which is in the snowy mountains of japan. Our volcano is about 2 million years old. Its last time it erupted was 7,000 thousand years ago. Therefore it is an active volcano because it has erupted in the past 10,000 years. It is over 17,000 feet and is very rocky. It is a dangerous volcano to get near and should not be messed with. Our volcano is very destructive and can take out a whole village. Our volcano When it last erupted all civilization was wiped out and the city had to start