Mount St Helen Research Paper

There are three different types of plate boundaries. The first type of plate boundaries is, the spreading boundary. A spreading boundary is when two plates move apart. The spreading boundary is also known as a divergent boundary. The second type of plate boundary is a colliding boundary. A colliding boundary is when two plates come together, or collide. It is also known as convergent boundary. The third is, a sliding boundary. A sliding boundary is when two plates slip past each other moving in opposite directions. It is also known as transform boundary. Those were the three different types of plate

The plate tectonics theory was made by a German named Alfred Wegener. He stated that a single continent existed about 300 million years ago named Pangaea and that it split into two continents of Laurasia in the north and Gondwanaland in the south. Today’s continents were formed by further splitting of the two masses.

The theory of plate tectonics states that the Earth’s lithosphere (top layer of the Earth’s crust) is split up into rigid sections called plates that are moving relative to one another as they move on top of the underlying semi-molten mantle. These plates are either continental, The North American Plate, or oceanic, The Nazca Plate.

In junior high school, I have learned the Continental Drift Theory, and my geography teacher told me there was a new theory based on the Continental Theory, i.e. Plate Tectonics. I accessed to the Internet to find the information about Plate Tectonics.

Imagine a single event that can kill 57 people and 7000 deer and elk. Snap trees like a toothpick, and turn the sky grey for 15 days. Now, stop imagining, Mount St. Helens, in the Cascade Range of southwestern Washington State, erupted. On May 18th,1980. According to (Campbell 371), “At least $1 billion in economic damage was reported”. The eruption of Mount St. Helens took many lives, and devastated America. Mount St. Helens destroyed more than 230 square miles of ancient forest.

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.

On May 18, 1980 Mt. St. Helens erupted, and wrecked havoc on its surroundings through the debris avalanche, the lateral blast, the mudflows, and the ash that traveled halfway across the United States. It all began in March of 1980 when a 4.2 earthquake and 174 aftershocks let the world know that the volcano had woken

Plate tectonics is the scientific theory that attempts to explain the movements of the Earth's lithosphere that have formed the landscape features we see across the globe today” (Briney). Geology defines “plate” as a large slab of solid rock, and “tectonics” is part of the Greek root word for “to build.” Together the words define how the Earth’s surface is built up of moving plates. The theory of plate tectonics dictates that individual plates, broken down into large and small sections of rock, form Earth’s lithosphere. These fragmented bodies of rock move along each other atop the Earth’s liquid lower mantle to create the plate boundaries that have shaped Earth’s landscape. Plate tectonics originated from meteorologist Alfred Wegener’s theory, developed in the early 20th century. In 1912, he realized that the east coast of South America and the west coast of Africa appeared to piece together like a jigsaw puzzle. He further examined the globe and deduced that all of Earth’s continents could somehow be assembled together and proposed the idea that the continents had once been linked in a single supercontinent called Pangaea. To explain today’s position of the continents, Wegener theorized that they began to drift apart approximately 300 million years ago. This theory

Mount St. Helens Location: Washington, United States Latitude: 46.20 N Longitude: 122.18 W height: 2,549 meters or 8,364 feet - 9,677 feet before May 18, 1980 Type: Stratovolcano Number of eruptions in past 200 years: 2-3 Latest Eruptions: Between 1660-1700, around 1800-1802, 1831, 1835, 1842-1844, 1847-1854, 1857, 1980-? Present thermal activity: strong steaming Nickname: Mount Fuji of the West Remarks: continuous intermittent activity since 1980 with occasional eruptions of steam and ash; occasional pyroclastic flows; intermittent dome forming. MSH is considered a young volcano that developed over the last 40,000 years and is one of the most active volcanoes in the Cascade Range. Geologists predicted that the

Mt St Helens (or the Fuji-san of America) is known for the May 18th, 1980 eruption which destroyed the whole north side of the volcano in just a few minutes within a 6 mile radius. Mount St Helens is named by George Vancouver after a British Diplomat nicknamed Baron St Helens. Mt St Helens is located in Yakima, Washington State, United States, North America on the North American tectonic plate. (Which is a continental plate) Yakima, Washington is almost right in the middle of the state, but Washington borders British Columbia and Alberta, Canada and Idaho and Oregon, United States, and of course, the Pacific Ocean.

Continental drift was a theory offered by Alfred Wegener in 1912 that hypothesized that all the continents at one time fit together as one land mass. Wegener, explained that the ends of each continent could fit together like a puzzle and that over time the continents drifted apart. "The model explained why the same types of fossils occur in sedimentary rock on both sides of the vast Atlantic Ocean" (Star, 2008, pg. 250), in other words allopatric speciation. Wegener's theory did not have a supporting geological mechanism. Many years later and advances in technology brought about the plate tectonics theory. Essentially it says:

The volcano continued to discharge an ash plume for hours after the lateral blast, rising over 20 km’s into the atmosphere. Prevailing winds blew over 500 million tons of ash across the United States reaching the east coast in 3 days and encompassing the globe in 15 days Regions as far as 400 km’s away were overwhelmed in complete darkness. Lakes, rivers, land, and the life they supported, appeared decimated. The familiar Pacific Northwest landscape was scoured of vegetation and buried under ash and pumice (USGS 2015).Mount St. Helens is located on a plate boundary where the oceanic plate (Juan de Fuca) meets the continental plate (North American) as seen in Figure 1 below. This boundary is part of the infamous Ring of Fire; a collection of volcanoes that form the margin around the Pacific Ocean. Mount St. Helens was created on a destructive margin where the Juan de Fuca plate subducts. Mount St. Helens is the youngest and most active of 13 volcanos in the Cascades and erupted last in 1857. The destructive nature of the margin between the two plates and the build up of pressure over 123 years is what caused this fierce 1980 eruption (Project Learning Tree, 2010). Rising temperatures due to the presence of magma and frictional effects, caused the crust to begin to melt, adding to the

The first sign of Mt. St. Helen exploding was a landslide starting at the rim of the summit crater. In 15 seconds, the north side of Mt. St. Helen was making its way down the side of the volcano. After the entire north side had collapsed superheated gasses and lava were released in a massive lateral explosion. This abrupt release of pressure created a nuees arfentes, “which is (in a volcanic eruption) a swiftly flowing, dense cloud of hot gases, ashes, and lava fragments.”1. The nuees arfentes wiped everything within 8 miles almost instantly. The shockwave rolled over the forest for 19 more miles forcing almost all of the centuries old trees to fall towards the north. After those 27 miles the trees remained upright but were burnt to death.

When Mount St. Helens erupted it took lives and destroyed at least fifty miles of the surrounding area. A volcano is a mountain or hill where a vent forms in the earth’s crust, letting ash, lava, and steam escape. Mount St. Helens included many details common to volcanic eruptions, caused damage and destruction, and how the area has recovered.