Surtsey Eruptions

The volcano had been dormant for hundreds of years and this violent explosion lasted days, sending ash into the atmosphere (D'arcy Wood). At the time, there were both native villagers living in the area and British officers, as the area was a colony under the British crown. Most of the surviving records of the explosion come from these British officers, some of whom didn’t actually witness the explosion but heard it and assumed the explosion was from rebels on the island. A captain of a nearby East India Company ship reported ash falling out of the sky and “By noon, the light that had remained in the eastern part of the horizon disappeared, and complete darkness had covered the face of day” (D'arcy Wood). At the time of the explosion another British subject, Sir Thomas Raffles, was the governor of Java, Indonesia. His compiled record of first hand accounts confirming the blackened sky and falling ash (Skulls). Similar accounts of darkness were recorded throughout the region, which was due to the sheer volume of ash that was released by the volcano. The ash-blackened sky was not the only impact of the eruption. The more far reaching effects of the eruption would not be felt until the summer of 1816, when the eruption gasses and particles so affected worldwide meteorological patterns that the western world called 1816 “The Year Without a Summer”.

With no prolonged periods of inactivity the volcano has continuously built up on itself. The last major eruption took place in 1790 and killed many people and animals, but numbers are unknown4. Starting in 1983 there was a chain of several eruptions that started and have yet to stop pushing lava through a lava tube till it reaches the Pacific Ocean. Over a span of twenty year the flow has

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.

The estimated age of the earliest above ground (subaerial) eruptions of Kilauea is between 50,000-100,000 years.

Volcanoes are one of the most destructive, yet, most beautiful things on Earth. They can make a famous city choke in its own ashes in one day, like Pompeii. Or they can turn a once damaging mountain into a graceful and peaceful home for new life, like Mount St. Helen’s. All volcanoes are unique, and no two are the same. Some erupt differently than others, some look different than others, and all are located in different spots all over the world. I learned this while completing the project and the five volcanoes I researched are examples of my discoveries. The five volcanoes I researched were Mount Hood, Mount Mageik, Long Island, Mount Muria, and Las Pilas.

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

How did the described volcanoes in Iceland and the Philippines change the environment to lesser or greater extents?

● This was the first time this type of volcano eruption was actually witnessed and

Mount St Helens erupted on the 18th May 1980 at 9am and is an active strata volcano Washington State USA, a MEDC. Where as on 18th July 1995, during the daytime, Montserrat, a LEDC during the day, Montserrat's Soufrière Hills composite volcano of a height 1050m, meaning sulphur hills, dormant for centuries, erupted and produced a phreatic eruption. The volcano is a strata volcano also. Mount St. Helens is a composite volcano which lies near to a destructive plate boundary where the small Juan de Fuca Plate is being subducted underneath the North American Plate where as the eruption

Bagley, M. (2013, February 28). Mount St. HelensEruption: Facts & Infomation. Retrieved December 15, 2016, from

The Capulin Volcano interestingly enough, is apart of what's known as the Raton-Clayton volcanic field (RCVF), a collected scattering of other volcano's that stretch well over 7,000 square miles. Located in Northeastern New Mexico, the Capulin lies dormante, although some believe extinct, since it's last volcanic activity more than 60,000 years ago. Capulin underwent a rather large eruption that formed its current 1000ft cinder cone shape, which gave way to "a number of small lava flows and cinder eruptions [that] paved over the mound, steepening it's slopes"(NASA, 2016). The base was inital made from the hot ash, cinder, and rock debris of the eruption, and the lava flows themselves were "basalt, deriving from the melting of the mantle" (Sayre and Ort, 2011). Due to

The island Surtsey, formed on November 14, 1963, did not stop erupting until June 1967, which means it erupted for three and a half years and is often compared to the Aleutian and Westman islands.

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

As the eruption wore on, it later produced a phase with red hot pyroclastic surges and flows, along with other volcanic material. This was referred to as the “Peléan” phase. These type of eruptions are known for the mentioned pyroclastic flows, along with hot mud surges. (Universe today) This phase was speculated to have begun during the latter part of the eruption, and is largely regarded as the main killer of most of the surrounding inhabitants. (Museum timeline)

On the 12th of June (Philippine Independence Day), millions of cubic yards of gas-charged magma reached the surface and resulted in the first major eruption which was then followed by a series of eruptions. It produced a 19 km long ash column and pyroclastic flows that extended up to four km from the summit to the river valleys. Later, a 15 minute eruption hurled ash straight up to the sky, reaching the heights of 24 km. The super heated air and the friction between