Volcano Eruptions

Tavurvur's eruption seen from space

2009-12-13T18:19:00.000-06:00

Published By

Matt

On: 08 December 2009 2:15 PM CET Source

Since a major eruption in 1994 that forced the complete evacuation of the nearby city of the same name, Rabaul Volcano on the island of New Britain has remained intermittently active. Rabaul is a large caldera volcano whose eastern rim has been breached and flooded by the sea.

Numerous vents and cones occur around the rim, including Tavurvur Cone, which was erupting when this image was captured by the Advanced Land Imager on NASA’s Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite on November 30, 2009.

Ash Plume from Tavurvur, Papua New Guinea. Credit: NASA

From November 20–26, strong eruptions from Tavurvur shot ash plumes 1.5 kilometers into the air above the summit and “showered the flanks with lava fragments that were incandescent at night,” according to a report from the Rabaul Volcano Observatory posted on the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Website.

A caldera volcano forms when a massive eruption empties the magma chamber underlying the volcano; the overlying rock and debris sink into the chamber, leaving a crater at the surface. The eruptions that formed Rabaul Caldera took place as recently as 3,500 and 1,400 years ago.

The 1994 eruption that buried Rabaul involved the currently active Tavurvur Cone as well as Vulcan Cone, located across Blanche Bay to the southwest (not pictured) The city of Rabaul is located on the peninsula across the Great Harbor from Tavurvur. More than a foot of ash fell on parts of the city, and combined with rain, it collapsed many of the small city’s buildings and houses. White dots on the peninsula may be buildings or building sites.

Google view of Pompeii

2009-12-13T17:59:00.000-06:00

Pompeii, with its ancient mosaics and buildings preserved by the volcanic eruption that buried the town, is one of the world’s most interesting destinations. But now you don’t need to board a plane to visit: It’s on Google Street View.

Google has mainly focused its 360-degree panoramic service on major living-and-breathing cities around the world like New York, San Francisco, or Rome [USA Today]. But this week the service began to feature Pompeii, allowing people anywhere in the world to tour the ancient marvels on site. Italy’s culture ministry says it hopes the move will boost tourism to the site [BBC News].

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius buried Pompeii in 20 feet of ash in 79 A.D., killing everyone there and destroying other nearby towns like Herculaneum. The disaster, however, preserved much of the city until its rediscovery in the 1700s, giving archaeologists a window into 1st-century life in the Roman world.

Pompeii isn’t the only historical site going live on Google Street View. Among the foreign sites appearing Thursday were Stonehenge, Prague, the ancient city of Caceres in Spain and famous windmills in the Dutch village of Kinderdijk-Elshout [ANSA].

Image: ANSA

Do you know volcanoes well?

2009-12-13T17:56:00.000-06:00

(Volcano Watch is a weekly article written by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.)

We often hear the term “IQ” (intelligence quotient) — but how would you rate your “VAQ” (volcano awareness quotient)? In other words, how well do you know the volcanoes in your backyard?

Let’s begin with a short quiz. No need to flash back to high school and those feelings of panic—sweaty palms and racing heart rate — that set in when your teacher announced a pop quiz on the homework you forgot to do. This quiz won’t be scored by anyone other than you.

Here are five questions to test your VAQ: How many active volcanoes are in the State of Hawaii? What is the most abundant gas emitted by Kilauea and other Hawaiian volcanoes? What is the longest known Kilauea eruption? During the past 200 years, how many times have Mauna Loa lava flows reached the ocean? How many earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater have occurred on Hawai`i Island since 1900?

The answers will be revealed later in this article. First, let us tell you about an upcoming and unparalleled opportunity to learn more about Hawaiian volcanoes — and increase your VAQ.

As we usher in the New Year, Mayor Billy Kenoi will issue a Proclamation from the County of Hawaii, designating January 2010 as “Volcano Awareness Month.” Throughout the month, the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO), in cooperation with Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Hawaii County Civil Defense, and the University of Hawaii at Hilo, will sponsor various events to promote the importance of understanding and respecting the volcanoes on which we live.

Volcano Awareness Month kicks off 10 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 2 with an opening event on the Jaggar Museum overlook in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. The public is invited to attend.

Kenoi has been invited to read the Proclamation, and featured speakers will include “Thomas A. Jaggar,” HVO’s founder and first Director (portrayed by Peter Charlot), and Jim Kauahikaua, HVO’s current Scientist-in-Charge. Cindy Orlando, Superintendent of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Quince Mento, Administrator of Hawaii County Civil Defense, and other special guests will also address volcano awareness.

This opening is just the first of a month-long series of events focusing on Hawaiian volcanoes. They include guided hikes, evening talks, teacher workshops and other extraordinary programs. In order to reach a wide audience, they are scheduled on weekdays, as well as weekends. Many of the programs and activities will be held in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, but some will also take place in Hilo and in Kona.

HVO selected January 2010 as Volcano Awareness Month, largely because Jan. 3, 2010, marks the 27th anniversary of Kilauea’s ongoing east rift zone eruption. It will also be 20 years since Kalapana was buried beneath lava and 50 years since Kapoho was inundated by fast-moving lava flows. The destruction of these two communities is a sobering reminder of why it’s important to understand how Hawaii’s volcanoes work.

Now, back to the quiz. The answers, in order of the questions asked, are as follows.

There are six active volcanoes (defined as erupting in the past 10,000 years) in the State of Hawaii. Water vapor is the most abundant gas released by Hawaiian volcanoes, followed by carbon dioxide (CO2) and sulfur dioxide (SO2). The Ailaau eruption, which lasted about 60 years from around 1410 to 1470, is Kilauea’s longest known eruption. Eight Mauna Loa lava flows, from eruptions in 1868, 1887, 1919, 1926, 1950, and 1959, have reached the ocean in the last 200 years. Since 1900, there have been 13 magnitude-6 or greater earthquakes—in 1929, 1941, 1950, 1951, 1952, 1954, 1962, 1973, 1975, 1983, 1989, and 2006.

Even if you aced the quiz—and especially if you did not—we encourage you to participate in Volcano Awareness Month events to learn more about Hawaii’s volcanoes. Don’t be caught with a low “volcano awareness quotient” if the volcano in your backyard erupts!

Plane landed on hardened lava

2009-11-19T19:17:00.000-06:00

A PLANE has landed on hardened lava after overshooting a runway in eastern Congo, injuring 20 people

Passengers onboard the plane, which was flying from Kinshasa to Goma, warned the crew of heavy clouds before the incident, United Nations-run Radio Okapi reports.

The flight, carrying 117 passengers, was operated by Compagnie Africaine d'Aviation, the Associated Press reports.

Lava has surrounded Goma’s airport since a volcanic eruption in 2002.

A cargo plane hit the hardened lava on the airport runway in 2007, bursting into flames and killing at least eight people.

Congo has experienced more fatal plane crashes than any other African country since 1945, the Aviation Safety Network says.

Families get ready to evacuate Mount Mayon's region as volcanic activity increases

2009-11-15T00:08:00.001-06:00

The province of Albay started preparing food packs and emergency equipment, including standby vehicles, on Wednesday, for possible evacuation of some 26,178 families from areas near the Mayon volcano due to the increasing probability of an eruption.

Mayon Volcano had two ash explosions early Wednesday and the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (Phivolcs) said it could recommend raising the alert status on Mayon Volcano to level 3, because of persistent ash explosions that might lead to a hazardous type of eruption.

Albay Governor Joey Salceda has instructed the Provincial Social Welfare and Development Office to continue repacking food items for possible preemptive evacuation that could last between one month (as in the case of the August-September 2006 event) to three months (as seen in prior eruptions).

For evacuation are 7,946 families at Alert 3 and 26,178 families at Alert 4.

"I have requested the Joint Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police Task Force Mayon to continually and strictly enforce checkpoints at strategic areas around the volcano to deter residents, particularly orchid gatherers and vegetable farmers, from entering the danger zones."

Cedric Daep, the department head of the Albay Public Safety and Emergency Management Office (APSEMO) said the municipal, city and barangay (village) disaster coordinating councils concerned were immediately reactivated and instructed to convene in order to review their contingency plans and master lists of population exposed to risks; conduct sustained social mobilization and community preparedness though barangay assemblies or neighborhood meetings; and to coordinate with the Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council (PDCC) through the safety and emergency management office to collect additional early warning and communication equipment."

Daep said he was awaiting word on the preemptive evacuation in Barangay Bañadero in Daraga town, especially those who had been relocated but had returned to the area for their crops.

"The said barangay is about eight kilometers away from the crater but a certain portion of the village is found within the six-kilometer permanent danger zone with around 20 households. The evacuation center in Daraga is ready to accommodate these residents but we are awaiting the report from the Daraga MDCC," Daep said.

The public safety and emergency management office has started distributing 1,000 wireless

public address systems for use by barangay (village) officials in mobilizing neighborhoods for evacuation.

A PDCC advisory issued Wednesday noon instructed the residents, motorists and schoolchildren in the ashfall-affected areas (traditionally southwest areas like Camalig, Guinobatan, Daraga, Legazpi and Sto. Domingo and the newly affected north-northwest areas--including Ligao, Oas, Polangui and Libon) to protect themselves by covering their noses with damp cloth or handkerchief.

Dr. Luis Mendoza, provincial health officer, told residents to use wet towels as protection from the ash or use masks, especially those with asthma and other respiratory illnesses.

Aside from the ash explosions at 1:58 a.m. and 7:02 a.m. on Wednesday, a visible plume spawned by a sudden ash ejection was reported by motorists traveling along the Malabog-Salvacion Junction in Daraga, Albay at around 12:20 p.m.

Volcanic eruptions in classroom

2009-11-14T14:54:00.000-06:00

The volcano was only a few inches tall and its lava was pinkish but the bubbling demonstration was a favorite of many of the fourth-graders attending Science Days at Angelo State University.

“I want to experience volcanoes,” Breanna Motes, a student at McGill Elementary School. “My favorite thing was the volcanoes.”

Joe Satterfield, an ASU Geology Department associate professor, and five graduate students last week demonstrated two types of volcanic eruptions with table-top models to groups of about 30 kids who rotated through the six morning sessions.

“I expect to see some of you back here in eight years,” Satterfield said, taking the opportunity to start recruiting the mostly 10-year-old children.

The decade-old Science Days program brings students from area elementary schools into the halls of ASU’s Cavness Science Building to experience chemistry, biochemistry, biology, geology, physics and math through hands-on experiences, said the program’s organizer, Nick Flynn, associate professor of biochemistry.

“Different departments were doing a very good job independently,” Flynn said. “Physics with its planetarium. Biology has those collections (mammals, plants, reptiles). We just decided to put it all together for a one-day experience.”

About 700 fourth-graders will attend Science Days this month, which began last week and continues today and Thursday. Students from 10 of the 17 San Angelo Independent School District elementaries are scheduled to attend, as are students from Big Lake, Wall, Angelo Catholic School, San Angelo Christian Academy and the San Angelo Christian Home School Association.

McGill student Hallie Walker also said she enjoyed the volcano demonstration in the day’s geology session.

“I also like the one where all the animals were stuffed, the skunk and the armadillo,” she said. “I’m going to be a veterinarian.”

The taxidermy display in the mammal room is impressive. One long wall is hung with more than 22 mounted heads, many of them from exotic animals such as a giraffe head and neck (at least 8 feet tall), a water buffalo and a reindeer. Other walls are covered with horned and antlered skulls, while an elephant skull rests on a metal file cabinet.

Loren Ammeran, an associate professor of biology, let the children a beaver pelt and showed them its identifying tail and teeth. She displayed a preserved black-and-white ruffed lemur.

“Has anyone seen the movie ‘Madagascar’? Madagascar is a real place,” she said, explaining the lemur was a native of that island off the east coast of Africa.

Ammeran, who has participated in Science Days for the past five years, said the children are always excited and full of questions.

“Some of them are very impressive,” she said. “It depends on what they’ve been studying at school, sometimes you hit it dead on.”

The reptile session, held in a crowded basement room smelling of formaldehyde, was not universally popular. Several students said they had to leave the room because of the odor.

Madison Stewart, Hallie’s cousin and also a student at McGill, disagreed.

“I liked the part where they showed the reptiles in the jars,” she said. “It didn’t smell so bad.”

Jason Strickland, the biology graduate student leading the reptile session, kept going with the 25-minute program. After all, for every child who left the room feeling sick, there were a dozen straining to get a closer look at the stubby arms on a giant salamander or a bullfrog big enough to fill a gallon jar.

He carefully uncoiled a snake from another jar.

“Cottonmouths, these are the guys I’m doing my research on so I catch them regularly,” he told the children. “But other snakes are in the river and most aren’t cottonmouths so don’t kill them, just avoid them.”

The Herbarium, a spacious, well-lit room only a floor above the reptile collection, holds the university’s plant collection.

Hollie Laqua, a graduate student for professor Bonnie Amos, the Herbarium’s curator, presided for Science Day, guiding the students in a discussion of such plant survival techniques as bullhorn acacia’s ant-infested spines and poison ivy’s rash-inducing chemical.

Bowie Elementary School student Bethany Gates, after attending only two of the six morning sessions, said she had already learned something from the chemistry discussion in the hands-on session.

“I learned that if you use a pentagon every time you draw a star, there’ll be another pentagon inside it,” she said.

McGill’s Breanna and her classmate, Cassie Bagwell, also said the hands-on session was the best.

“You got to look at eyeballs and cockroaches,” Breanna said.

“And hearts and brains,” Cassie said. “I’m going to be a wildlife veterinarian when I grow up.”

By far the most popular event of Science Days, however, is the afternoon Magic Show put on to demonstrate aspects of chemistry and physics.

Kevin Boudreaux, chemistry instructor and ASU’s resident magician, said the show has been part of the Science Days program since the beginning.

“The kids get a kick out of it, especially when anything burns or blows up,” Boudreaux said.

The program drew screams and standing ovations, especially when “magician’s assistant” Shane Anderson put flame to anything.

“I like to make things go boom,” the computer science major said.

He is minoring in chemistry minor and, along with Tania Estrada, had volunteered to participate in the show.

“We have to specifically choose things that look spectacular but are still safe,” Boudreaux said.

“Don’t want to set off smoke alarms,” Estrada, a biochemistry major, said.

“These are demonstrations that have been around for a while,” Boudreaux said. “Just to keep things interesting, we do new ones periodically, like the elephant toothpaste one. Somebody saw that at an (American Chemical Society) meeting a couple of years ago.”

The auditorium emptied and the children headed in scraggly lines for waiting school buses, marking the end of another ASU Science Day.

“We’re doing six to eight Science Days a year,” organizer Flynn said. “We’re getting into about 10 years, close to 10,000 students. We’re getting students who did Science Days and we’re seeing them again in college.”

Prayers on Mount Mayon slopes to keep it in restive state

2009-11-14T14:13:00.000-06:00

An obscure tribal group from Mindanao arrived here over the weekend to hold a religious ritual near the slopes of Mt. Mayon volcano in a bid to invoke spirits to thwart a potential violent volcanic eruption.

Datu Higyaman Naholag-ayan , the tribal governor from Bukidnon who will lead the prayer ritual with 400 tribesmen from various ethnic group will perform the religious rites to stop the 2,450 meters high volcano in Albay from erupting.

Datu HOLag-ayan said the ritual will be held at the famous Cagsawa ruins where remnants of a church belfry stands in a village in Daraga town that was buried by lahar, rocks and other volcanic debris spewed by Mt. Mayon in 1814.

Clad in their ethnic costume, the group intends to hold ritual prayers and offer animal sacrifices to ask unseen spirits to intercede and calm down the restive volcano listed in the world tourism map as the volcano with an almost perfect cone.

He said: “We will offer prayers and sacrifices to ask the hundreds of spirits to stop the volcano from erupting and for the protection of people from calamities brought by volcanic eruptions including typhoons and other natural disasters that may come.”

The ritual will save the people of Albay from the wrath of any disaster be it volcanic eruption or even typhoons, earthquakes and other calamities, he pointed out.

He however, said that the ritual is not an assurance that this would prevent the volcano erupting but this would make the people aware of the danger so that they may be prepared in the event the volcano erupts.

The Datu said he believes that the volcano is no ordinary mountain but is a kingdom where people live and die.

Albay Gov.Joey Salceda will lead thousands of people across the province to witness the colorful religious prayer rituals.

The datu said there are 135 ethnic groups with 12 million members across the country. Bicol has 27,000 tribesmen spread over the provinces of Camarines Sur, Camarines Norte and Albay.

As this developed, Mt. Mayon continues to show signs of restiveness, with 7 quakes jolting the volcano for the past 24 hours.

Mt Mayon alert status remains at Alert Level 2, meaning the volcano is still on a state of unrest as it continue to spew ash with periodic explosions.

Military and police personnel manning the 12 checkpoints surrounding the volcano will enforce the off limits regulation and strictly implement the 6 kilometer radius Permanent Danger Zone and the 7 km. extended danger zone (EDZ) on the southeast flank of the volcano due to the threat from sudden explosions and rockfalls from the upper slopes.

Residents near active river channels and those areas perennially identified as lahar prone in the southeast sector should be on alert during heavy and prolonged rainfall.

Mercury has active volcanoes on its surface

2009-11-07T15:48:00.001-06:00

NASA's Mercury mission spacecraft, Messenger, is revolutionizing humanity's view of the first rock from the sun. And its primary science mission hasn't even started yet.

During its third and final flyby of Mercury, NASA's Messenger has found minerals on the planet's surface that current models say shouldn't be there in such abundance. And it appears that the planet was volcanically active – explosively so – for far longer than current ideas about its geological history suggest.

The flyby took place Sept. 29. Mission scientists unveiled highlights from the flyby during a press briefing Tuesday afternoon.

Piecing together Mercury's story "is like reading a fine mystery novel by Dorothy Sayers or Agatha Christie," says Sean Solomon, the mission's lead scientist and a researcher at the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. The effort comes complete with clues that point to the story's denouement, as well as red herrings to throw a reader off track.

Mercury is the smallest of the solar system's eight planets. And it's the oddest among the rocky planets. Its iron core comprises up to 70 percent of the planet's mass, making it the most dense planet in the solar system after Earth.

Iron and titanium surface

Which brings up one of Mercury's red herrings. Previous studies have indicated that the planet's surface is made up mostly of silicate-based minerals. That's been considered odd, since the vast majority of the planet is taken up by an iron-titanium core, notes David Lawrence, another Messenger mission scientist.

Then, during the first Mercury flyby on Jan. 14, 2008, Messenger detected unexpectedly high levels of iron and titanium in surface minerals, he says. Flyby No. 3 provided an opportunity to check those initial results. It found that the first measurements were no fluke; the planet really is covered virtually universally with iron and titanium oxides.

That's more consistent with what you'd expect from a largely metallic planet like Mercury, Dr. Lawrence adds. But it calls current models of the planet's formation into question.

To explain how a largely Ironman planet came to be covered with a largely silicate crust, some scientists had invoked a powerful impact early in the planet's history. This would have knocked away much of the planet's original iron-rich crust, leaving a thinner shell dominated by silicates. But now that the crust appears to be dominated by these metal oxides, the cosmic smackdown theory requires a hard second look. And that's just one of three broad groups of ideas scientists have considered to explain the now-debunked surface silicate.

"This is a pretty exciting result for us," says Lawrence, a geochemist at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, which built and runs the desk-sized Messenger spacecraft.

Volcanic activity

Red Herring No. 2? Previous observations suggested that Mercury became geologically dead very early in its 4.6 billion year history. Not so, according to images for the third flyby. Among the portraits: a 180-mile-wide basin with two concentric rims. The floor below the lowest rim cradles "some of the youngest volcanic floes," says Brett Denevi, an Arizona State University researcher and member of the Messenger science team.

How young? The team estimates that the floes are around a billion years old – suggesting the planet was volcanically active far longer than previously thought. Moreover, features on the plains surrounding the basin suggest explosive eruptions – something that happens when the magma has a high gas content. That observation, in turn, could yield clues about the composition of the planet's interior.

Launched on Aug. 3, 2004, the Messenger spacecraft is expected to begin orbiting Mercury on March 19, 2011. The $446-million mission is expected to last one Earth year. And researchers are eagerly awaiting its arrival.

"We still have a long way to go to understand the full story line" on Mercury, says lead scientist Dr. Solomon.

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Click here to read more about the images captured by Messenger spacecraft's first flyby of Mercury.

The continent of Africa could split up as a result of volcanic eruptions

2009-11-07T15:36:00.000-06:00

VOLCANIC activity may split the African continent in two owing to a recent geological crack in northeastern Ethiopia, researchers said today.

The 60km split in the desolate Afar region, which was the result of two volcanic eruptions in September 2005, has enabled scientists to further examine the earth's tectonic movements, said a report published in the Geophysical Research Letters.

"The significance of the finding is that a huge magnetic deformation can happen within a few days like in oceans," Atalay Arefe, an Ethiopia-based university professor who was part of the study, said.

Researchers say faults and fissures, which normally occur deep down on the ocean floor, are the main processes by which continents gradually break off from each other.

They cite Africa, which underwent a similar phase when it split from America millions of years ago.

"Normally, such phenomena happens beneath the ocean, which is inaccessible, expensive and very difficult to make experiments. But in Afar, it's quite a natural laboratory for us to carry those out," Prof Atalay said.

Prof Atalay, who was part of an international group of scientists who have been undertaking studies since the eruptions, said the event indicated what was likely to happen in the mainland.
"The ocean's formation is happening slowly, likely to take a few million years. It will stretch from the Afar depression (straddling Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti) down to Mozambique," he said.

The Afar region, known for its salt mines and active volcanoes, is one of the lowest and hottest places on the planet.

Killer tsunamis and volcanic eruptions, a part of history

2009-11-07T14:11:00.000-06:00

The massive eruption of the Thera volcano in the Aegean Sea more than 3,000 years ago produced killer waves that raced across hundreds of miles of the Eastern Mediterranean to inundate the area that is now Israel and probably other coastal sites, a team of scientists has found.

The team, writing in the October issue of Geology, said the new evidence suggested that giant tsunamis from the catastrophic eruption hit “coastal sites across the Eastern Mediterranean littoral.” Tsunamis are giant waves that can crash into shore, rearrange the seabed, inundate vast areas of land and carry terrestrial material out to sea.

The region at the time was home to rising civilizations in Crete, Cyprus, Egypt, Phoenicia and Turkey.

For decades, scholars have suggested that the giant eruption, just 70 miles from Crete, might have brought about the mysterious collapse of Minoan civilization at the peak of its glory. The remnants of Thera’s eruption today make up a circular archipelago of volcanic Greek isles known as Santorini.

Thera is thought to have erupted between 1630 and 1550 B.C., or the Late Bronze Age, a time when many human cultures made tools and weapons of bronze. Scholars say the tsunamis and dense clouds of volcanic ash from the eruption had cultural repercussions that rippled across the Eastern Mediterranean for decades, even centuries. The fall of Minoan civilization is usually dated to around 1450 B.C. Geologists judge the eruption as far more violent than the 1883 eruption of the volcanic island of Krakatoa in Indonesia, which killed more than 36,000.

The five tsunami researchers came from Haifa University, in Israel; Hunter College, in New York City; McMaster University, in Canada; and the University of Hawaii.

The team did its excavations off Caesarea, Israel, a coastal town dating from Roman and Byzantine days. The coastal region was only sparsely settled at the time of the Thera eruption, with no identifiable city.

The team sank a half-dozen tubes into the offshore seabed and pulled up sediment cores for analysis. It looked for standard signs of tsunami upheaval, including pumice (the volcanic rock that solidifies from frothy lava), distinctive patterns of microfossils, cultural materials from human dwellings and well-rounded beach pebbles that seldom appear in deeper waters.

Writing in Geology, a journal published by the Geological Society of America, the team reported finding evidence of three tsunamis — two historically documented ones dating to A.D. 115 and 551, and one from the time of the Thera eruption.

The Thera tsunamis, the team wrote, left a signature layer in the seabed of well-rounded pebbles, distinctive patterns of mollusks and characteristic inclusions in rocky fragments all oriented in the same direction.

The disturbed layer, up to 16 inches wide, came from a few feet below the seabed in waters up to 65 feet deep.

“These findings,” the team wrote, “constitute the most comprehensive evidence to date that the tsunami event precipitated by the eruption of Santorini reached the maximum extent of the Eastern Mediterranean.”

The team added that, if the giant waves were big enough to reach Israel, “then presumably other Late Bronze Age coastal sites across the Eastern Mediterranean littoral will likely have been affected as well.”

Lava formation on Icelandic beach

2009-09-19T23:15:00.001-05:00

Photograph by: Mike Grenby , For the Calgary Herald

This really is the land of fire and ice.

While three major glaciers cover 15 per cent of the country, you can also get up close and personal with thermal vents as they roar their superheated sulphurous steam out through cracks in the ground.

“It’s hot!” exclaimed one visitor as he quickly pulled back the hand he had thrust toward one fumarole alongside Highway 1, just past Lake Myvatn here in northern Iceland.

The geothermal activity provides the country with much of its hot water and heating plus about one-quarter of its electricity.

While nearby Greenland is mostly ice, Iceland, which hangs just below the Arctic Circle, is mostly green — at least in the summer. And Canadian “green” goes twice as far as it used to, thanks to Iceland’s economic problems, which cut the currency value in half.

Iceland attractions revolve mainly around nature. The vast treeless landscapes are truly spectacular.

Lava fields in various stages of disintegration dominate large parts of the country. Mountains, including volcanoes, rise steeply from the valleys. The ocean is never far away and along with the many lakes, attracts abundant birdlife.

Because of the fire below, you can bathe in large outdoor spa pools like the Blue Lagoon and the five-year-old Myvatn Nature Baths whose opening is sometimes delayed while the super-heated water is cooled to a tolerable 40 C.

The volcanic nature of Iceland is very evident. Eruptions are so prevalent (30 volcanoes have erupted over the past two centuries) the phonebook’s “how to cope with natural disasters” section includes detailed instructions on the best way to survive a volcanic eruption.

Recent major eruptions

occurred in 2000 and 1996.

The worldwide economic crisis forced overextended Iceland into bankruptcy. The exchange rate doubled in favour of foreign currencies. Some prices have risen because Iceland has to import so many items, but prices for foreign visitors generally have fallen to half of their former very expensive levels.

Although Europeans can catch a car ferry for the three-day trip to Iceland — Norway and then Denmark ruled Iceland until it became independent in 1944 — most international visitors arrive either at

Keflavik airport or via a one-day cruise stopover. (Icelandair flies directly to Keflavik from Seattle,

Toronto and Halifax with fares starting from under $1,000 return.)

Keflavik sits on Iceland’s southwest tip, the Reykjanes peninsula, which offers a taste in miniature of many of the country’s attractions: golfing, deep sea fishing, the lava fields including the Mid-Atlantic Ridge where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are moving apart at 2.5 centimetres a year, a replica of the Viking ship Islendingur (Vikings first settled in Iceland in 874) and the Blue Lagoon; see www.visitreykjanes.com.

Reykjavik, the world’s most northerly capital city, is a 45-minute drive north on a mostly four-lane highway.

Keep an eye out for the irreverent but informative Reykjavik Grapevine, which recently published The Best of Reykjavik 2009, including “Best place to cheer up (the petting zoo),” “Best biking tour,” “Best place to shop for touristy stuff (Handprjonasambandio)” and “Best place to hook up (Vegamot, Hresso, Dubliners)” — as well as restaurants and bars; check www.grapevine.is.

You wouldn’t suspect the locals were experiencing financial problems, judging by the shopping and bar action and the number of Range Rovers and BMWs, although one person said:

“People took out loans based on foreign currencies. So since the value of our money dropped in half, many people have trouble making double their former payments and worry about losing their car or home.”

Also, more Icelanders are holidaying at home, so booking accommodation ahead is important.

A paved ring road runs about 1,400 kilometres around Iceland, past picturesque waterfalls and rivers, as well as farmhouses and churches set along the shore or up into the mountains.

By the middle of the short summer — similar to that of Canada’s North — large rolled hay bales, covered in white plastic, start showing up in the fields, along with sheep and cows and the sturdy, short (1.3-metre high) and mild mannered Icelandic horses, whose special running walk is so smooth the rider hardly notices the motion (they are also raised for their meat).

Here are just a few highlights:

* The easy, one-day Golden Circle tour just to the east of Reykjavik includes Geysir (and its Strokkur geyser which shoots water and steam 30 metres into the air every few minutes), the Gullfoss waterfall and Thingvellir National Park with moonlike landscapes and another section of the ever-widening Mid-Atlantic Ridge. For delicious, fresh, local food and the most amazing chocolate mousse with raspberry puree and watermelon pieces, plan a lunch or dinner stop at Lindin restaurant, in Laugarvatn.

* Drive north to Borgarnes where the Settlement Centre provides a fascinating history of how and where the Vikings settled in Iceland starting in the 10th century.

* Hvammstangi features the Icelandic Seal Centre, an Icelandic wool-knitting factory and shop, and nearby Gauksmyri Lodge, with horseback riding, hiking, birdwatching, yoga and Bowen therapy.

* Lake Myvatn is surrounded by lava fields, craters, bubbling mud pots, steaming fumaroles and otherworldly landscapes as well tranquil countryside for hiking, cycling and climbing.

* Credit cards are widely accepted; service is included so you don’t need to tip. Hotel room rates often include breakfast. Camping offers an inexpensive alternative. Most people speak English.

* Long daylight hours in summer allow you to make the most of your visit.

Former contributing Herald money columnist and now travel writer Mike Grenby teaches journalism at Bond University on Australia’s Gold Coast: mgrenby@staff.bond.edu.au

Is global warming linked to volcanic eruptions?

2009-09-19T22:03:00.000-05:00

A team of geologists is trying to gather data in an attempt to understand how global warming will increase the explosiveness of volcanic eruptions.

As increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels warm the planet, the problems associated with melting ice won’t just raise sea-levels; they will also uncap volcanoes.

But just when and how these unstable magmatic beasts will blow in a warmer world is hard to predict.

“The fact is we are causing future contemporary climate change. Geological hazards are another portfolio of things we haven’t thought of,” Bill McGuire from the Aon Benfield UCL Hazard Research Centre at University College London told Nature News.

He organized a meeting of volcanologists and oceanographers at the university on September 15-17 to draw attention to the problem.

A priority is to develop global models of how changes in the climate bring about changes in geological activity, and how those processes feed back into the system.

At present, such models just don’t exist, according to David Pyle, a volcano expert from the University of Oxford, UK, who spoke at the meeting.

“As thick ice is getting thinner, there may be an increase in the explosivity of eruptions,” he said.

The problem is complex, exacerbated by the difficulty of separating forcing by the climate from the effects of a volcanic eruption - aerosols emitted by an eruption will have consequences for atmospheric chemistry, which in turn affect the climate.

“The complex consequences of volcanic activity for the atmospheric biosphere remain poorly understood,” Pyle said.

But there is definitely some evidence that less ice means more dramatic eruptions.

“As thick ice is getting thinner, there may be an increase in the explosivity of eruptions,” said Hugh Tuffen from Lancaster University, UK.

Volcanic eruption created changes in Ethiopia

2009-07-31T21:59:00.000-05:00

A team of geologists and geophysicists dispatched to Northeast Ethiopia, where volcano has recently erupted, confirmed that the eruption caused surface displacement in the area.

The volcano has recently occurred in the area located at 65-kms northwest of Semera, capital of Afar regional state.

Geologists drawn from Institute of Geophysics, Space Sciences, Astronomy and Earth Science Department of the Addis Ababa University, Universites of Cambridge and Oxford told ENA over the weekend that the volcano, which occurred on June 29th , 2009, has created about 4.5-kms opening within a 60-km-long dyke created in the area in 2005.

According to the geologists, the 2-meter wide dyke has extended from Dabbahu to Harraro areas.

With the expectation of more volcanic events in the region, Dabbahu-Manda-Hararo is the most active area on the planet right now, they said.

Assistant Professor at the Institute of Geophysics, Space Sciences, and Astronomy of the Addis Ababa University, Dr. Elias Lewi said that number of volcano incidents happened in the area since 2005.

Most of the volcanic eruptions that occurred in the region remained beneath the surface of the earth, he said, adding, the recent one is the fourth eruption in Ethiopia since 2005.

According to him, the eruption was a follow-up to the dyke created due to similar eruption four years ago .

The recent volcano covering 4.5 square kilometers has also created small hills elevated from 30 to 40 meters.

Associate professor at the institute, Dr. Tesfaye Kidane on his part said lava has overflowed from the dyke that covers 5-kms long and surface displacement occurred following the eruption.

He said that bigger eruptions and earth quakes are expected to happen in the next five years.

The geologists urged responsible bodies in the region to consider the issue in any of development activities being undertaken in the area.

Taal volcanic activity has tourists kicked off island!

2009-07-31T21:43:00.001-05:00

Tourists were ordered off an island volcano near the Philippine capital on Tuesday after seismologists detected ground shaking that they said could presage a minor eruption.

"Significant volcanic and seismic events have been detected over the past months" and the main crater of Taal "remains off limits to the public because steam explosions may suddenly occur or high concentrations of toxic gases may accumulate," an official advisory said.

The tiny crater island is surrounded by a lake that formed from a past eruption. Scores of visitors cross the lake by boat every day before making a short day hike to the 311-metre (1,020-foot) high crater lip.

Mayon volcano, a touristic attraction!

2009-07-31T19:53:00.000-05:00

ALBAY - Despite stern warnings from disaster officials in Albay of a possible Mayon volcano eruption, foreign and local tourists on Wednesday still flocked to areas that have been declared as danger zones.

The tourists, some of whom were from Switzerland, were seen visiting the Mayon Planetarium and Science Park in Buang in Tabaco City, just 3 kilometers away from the volcano's crater. The planetarium is known as the "Little Baguio" (the summer capital of the Philippines) in Albay because of the cool weather.

Several volcanologists have noted that it is harmful to stay in the area since a sudden volcanic eruption is possible.

Despite the risk, tour groups still enjoyed taking pictures of the newr-perfect-cone-shaped volcano. "The place is amazing. So there is no reason not to come here. And I saw many people coming around, so there's no reason for us to be afraid," said Raphael Perruchoud, a Swiss tourist, in an interview with ABS-CBN.

The Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) warned, however, that a 6-kilometer perimeter around the volcano has been declared a permanent danger zone and should be off-limits to any human activity.

The provincial government of Albay had supposedly halted tourism-related activities within the danger zone, including the trek to the Mayon Planetarium. Disaster teams sent by the local government are set to meet to discuss how to prevent tourists from entering the planetarium grounds.

Members of Albay's Public Safety and Emergency Management Service Office (APSEMO) said it would be better if they put up warning signs around the danger zone.

Sustained magma activity

For the past 24 hours, PHIVOLCS recorded 5 short-duration tremors and observed crater glow in the evenings, which indicate sustained magma activity inside the volcano.

Residents living on the volcano's foot have also reported strange animal behavior, possibly indicating an impending eruption. They reportedly observed an increasing number of snakes and wild pigs descending from the volcano's slopes.

Ed Laguerta, PHIVOLCS resident volcanologist, said wild animals are sensitive to their environment and instinctively look for safety when sensing harm. He said the animals might be feeling the increased temperatures on the volcano's rim, prompting them to move away.

PHIVOLCS officials, however, have yet to release an official statement on this matter. Report by Jose Carretero, ABS-CBN Bicol.

Mayon's volcanic activity has encouraged evacuation plans

2009-07-31T19:18:00.003-05:00

Mayon erupting in August 2004.

The increasing unrest at Mayon in the Philippines has prompted National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) to recommend the evacuation of over 75,000 people> from around the volcano. This, however, will only happen if the activity at the volcano continues to increase. The volcano currently sits at Alert Level 2 (increasing unrest) and if it were to increase to Level 3 (increased tendency towards eruption), then the evacuations of the first ~1,800 families closest to the volcano would begin. Only if the volcano reached Alert Level 4 (hazardous eruption imminent) would the full evacuation of the 75,000 people in the "High Risk Zone" that extends 8 kilometer / 5 miles around the main crater area. Centers are currently being set up to accommodate some of the evacuees.

Of course, there are always people who don't want to heed the warnings of the authorities and Mayon is no exception. Upwards of 6,000 people living within 6 kilometers / 3.7 miles of the volcano have so far refused to evacuated the government-designated "no man's land" close to Mayon. Many of the residents are farmers who were relocated from the area but continue to return. The area around Mayon are quite fertile thanks, in part, to the volcano material deposited on its slopes - and people don't want to leave their home if its not necessary. This has been an ongoing struggle between local residents and officials about evacuating/relocating but the importance of maintaining a buffer around the volcano was highlighted in 1993 when 80 people near Lepazgi City were killed by an unforeseen eruption of the volcano. However, there are no indications that local officials will forcibly remove people (at this point at least).

PHIVOLC plans to measure the sulfur dioxide emissions from Mayon in the next few days. Seimicity has increased to the levels of the August 2008 phreatic eruption of the volcano and the levels of inflation of the edifice (0.4-1 cm) have been sustained over the weekend. The last major eruption of Mayon was in 2006.

Volcanic activity displayed by Mayon may cause evacuation

2009-07-22T22:55:00.000-05:00

The National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) on Monday recommended the possible evacuation of more than 15,000 families along radius of Mayon Volcano in Albay if the volcanic activity worsened in the next few days.

In the statement released by NDCC Administrator Retired Maj. Gen. Glenn Rabonza, the primary objective of the Provincial Disaster Coordinating Council (PDCC) of Albay led by Gov. Joey Salceda is to have zero casualties once the situation of the volcano worsens even more.

The Alert Level 2 raised by the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (PHIVOLCS) in still in effect.

According to plan submitted by the PDCC-Albay, once the alert level is raised to level 3, around 1,785 families living inside the six kilometer radius permanent danger zone will be immediately evacuated by the provincial government. These include some barangays in the cities Tabaco and Ligao, and Municipalities of Camalig, Malilipot, Guinobatan and Daraga.

Governor Salceda instructed disaster officers in those said cities and municipalities to update their data on population at risk and their respective warning and evacuation plans for the Provincial Disaster Office to make necessary adjustments in its contingency plans which calls for immediate evacuation of the affected residents when Alert Level 3 is raised.

Meanwhile, around 13,458 families are ready to evacuate along the 8-kilometer extended High Risk Zone if the alert level will reach level 4.

The PHIVOLCS and some local officials of Albay yesterday conducted and aerial survey to determine the present status of the volcanic activity of Mayon.

Salceda warned around 4,000 farmers who were keeping watch over crops within the permanent danger zone to return to their villages at night to avoid getting caught by surprise should the volcano erupt.

Human activity near the volcano is already prohibited after PHIVOLCS raised the alert level from 1 to 2 last Friday after an increase in abnormal activity in the past days.

Volcanic activity on Mars?

2009-07-22T22:41:00.000-05:00

From literature to the Big Screen, the fascination with the planet Mars has taken many forms. In the geology department at Mercyhurst College, that attraction currently surrounds three of the planet's oldest and most explosive volcanoes known as highland paterae. These distinctive landforms will be studied extensively by a team of faculty and student researchers this summer, thanks to a $137,000 NASA grant awarded to Dr. Nicholas Lang, first-year assistant professor of geology at Mercyhurst.

"The purpose of the study is to increase our understanding of this unique and early style of volcanic activity on Mars, which we hope will provide us with a greater understanding of the history of the planet," Lang said.

Unlike volcanoes in Hawaii and many of the volcanoes on Mars known for effusive, or gentle, eruptions, the morphology of the now extinct highland paterae - which have a large central caldera and extensively channeled and ash-covered flanks – suggests a history of enormous explosions.

That explosive activity, Lang said, may have implications for water sources on Mars. Mars' atmosphere is now too thin and its temperature too cold to allow liquid water, but that may not always have been the case. At one time, Mars may have had extensive amounts of surface water and groundwater that may have shaped the topography that now exists on the planet, particularly the chaotic-looking terrain that surrounds some highland paterae.

Lang said the interaction of basaltic magma at the site of highland paterae, when mixed with water, could have intensified the volcanoes' eruptions.

Further, he noted, "When you put volatiles into the atmosphere, you have to consider what impact that may have on a planet. Some think the early conditions of Mars were more Earth-like in terms of pressure and temperature conditions. What happened?"

Lang and his students will do their part to discover more about the history of the planet by collecting and analyzing available data, mostly accessed online, from high-resolution spacecraft images.

"This is an opportunity for our students to get involved in frontline research and contribute to advances in the field of Mars' research," Lang said. "It also enables them to develop valuable research skills that will be crucial to their pursuit of graduate school and career placement."

Mayon volcano displays some activity which concerns experts!

2009-07-11T22:14:00.000-05:00

On with the news!

Mayon Volcano in the Philippines with Legazpi City in the foreground.

Mayon, one of the most active volcanoes in the Philippines, is causing concern due to increasing signs of activity. Renato Solidum, the director of PHIVOLCS (Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology), said that there has been increasing seismic activity and "glow" at the summit of the volcano near (~20 miles / 45 km) Legazpi City. However, even after this sense of increasing activity, the alert level (1) has not changed, but local residents were altered to the new activity. This means that there is low-level unrest with slight increase in seismicity. The last notable eruption in 2006 at Mayon (oddly called a "silent eruption" in the linked article) produced a lava flow. There were also minor phreatic explosions in 2008.

Alaska: Redoubt volcano's alert was downgraded

2009-07-11T21:55:00.000-05:00

The Alaska Volcano Observatory yesterday downgraded the aviation warning code for Mount Redoubt from orange to yellow and the alert level from Watch to Advisory. Alert levels had been high since Mount Redoubt’s most recent rumblings starting March 15. The most dramatic eruptions happened between March 22 and April 4 when the volcano spewed ash, gas and steam up to 65,000 feet high. High level winds carried ash to Talkeetna, Skwentna and Trapper Creek while air traffic came to a halt for a few days.

After April 4, Redoubt continued to erupt, creating a lava dome in the summit crater. A lava flow now extends nearly 0.6 mile down the north flank of the volcano.

AVO reports that observations from overflights, webcam and satellite imagery have not been able to detect changes caused by dome growth for the past three weeks. However, the dome is unstable and AVO scientists warn that a collapse could be accompanied by the production of a large ash plume in the Drift River valley.

Lava flow has slowed significantly and may even have stopped, prompting AVO to downgrade the aviation color code to yellow and the alert level to advisory. Advisory means that volcanic activity has decreased but continues to be closely monitored for possible renewed increase. Seismic activity slowed down as well, but is still higher than normal. AVO had staff monitoring Redoubt around the clock, but now transitions employees off the 24/7 shifts.

Story by Diana Haecker

Volcanic eruptions creating unusual sunsets?

2009-07-11T21:43:00.001-05:00

I’ll have to keep an eye on the sky today as the sun sets.

Spaceweather.com notes that people have been reporting unusual sunsets, possible the result of the June 12 eruption of Russia's Sarychev Peak volcano.

The eruption sent plumes of sulfur dioxide and other debris into the atmosphere, which spread to the United States and Europe.

The result has been delicate ripples of white over the western horizon. Then, as the twilight deepens, the sky turns a shade of lavender.

Has anyone in the Crossroads area noticed the unusual sunsets?

Mount Cleveland displayed some signs of activity

2009-07-09T23:53:00.001-05:00

Mount Cleveland, located in the eastern Aleutian Islands near the community of Nikolski, erupted Thursday morning sending an ash cloud less than 15,000 feet in the air.

According to the Alaska Volcano Observatory, the ash cloud detached from the volcano and moved south.

Cleveland last erupted in February, 2001. Three explosive events sent ash plumes to as high as 39,000 feet.

AVO elevated the alert level for the volcano located about 940 miles southwest of Anchorage to orange.

Mud volcano is bad news for the area!

2009-07-09T22:52:00.002-05:00

by Rich Bowden - Jun 23 2009, 05:04

Img: 2006 pic of mudflow. Credit: fragrag

Scientists observing Indonesia's infamous mud volcano in heavily-populated East Java say the eruption could continue to be active for another thirty years and threaten around 100,000 people in the area.

Geologist Mark Tingay, from Curtin University, in Western Australia said the destructive mud-spewing volcano, which last erupted in 2006 killing 14 and displacing 40,000 people.

“Early in the morning of 29 May 2006, hot mud erupted from the ground in the densely populated Porong District of Sidoarjo. With initial flow rates of around 5000 cubic metres per day, the mud quickly inundated the area,” he said.

The volcano continues to spew out 100,000 cubic metres (or 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools) of scalding hot mud each day, according to a Geological Society Australia news release.

He added the people in the surrounding villages remain threatened as the eruption gains in strength.

“Since then, the so-called Lusi eruption has increased in strength, expelling over 100,000,000 cubic metres of mud at flow-rates of up to 170,000 cubic metres per day. The mud—which is now being prevented from spreading outwards by hastily erected walls—has covered over 7 square kilometres of land at depths (so far) of up to 30 metres," he said.

He said thousands had lost their homes and warned that many more faced calamity if the eruption continues. To date the estimated cost of damage caused by the volcano is $4.9 billion.

Dr Tingay is part of an international team formed as part of the international disaster relief effort.

Flights cancelled due to volcanic eruption!

2009-07-09T22:02:00.001-05:00

NASA released this image of the ash plume from the Sarychev Peak on June 15. (NASA)

A remote volcano in the North Pacific is playing havoc with flights between Vancouver and Asia, as Air Canada, Air China, Asiana Airlines and Korean Airlines all cancelled or delayed flights in and out of Vancouver International Airport on Tuesday.

The Sarychev Peak, on Russia's central Kuril Islands, began belching plumes of ash and smoke high into the atmosphere on June 12 and airlines are taking no chances flying through the gritty residue.

Anyone travelling between Vancouver and Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong is urged to check with their airline before heading to the airport.

According to NASA, the ash plume from the eruption reached an altitude somewhere between eight and 16.5 kilometres above sea level, leaving a brown mass of volcanic ash more than 50 kilometres in diameter.

Giant underwater volcano attracts scientists' attention!

2009-07-09T21:31:00.000-05:00

The under-water volcano Columbus, situated 6,5 meters south-east of Santorini in the Aegean sea, is being observed with great interest by Greek and German scientists. The have registered constant earthquakes of 4 Richter, hot air eruptions and continuous changes in the sea floor around the crater. The volcano is 470 meters high and reaches down to 17 meters beneath the sea floor. Its crater’s width is out of proportion- 1.5 kilometers. Complex submarine equipment has shown that Columbus’s volcanic activity never stops. It is the reason for the frequent earthquakes and constant changes in the surface around the crater.

“The distortion of the sea floor is minor but it can be seen on the walls of the crater and in the 10-15-kilometers perimeter around it,” says Martin Heds from the Geology and Seismology institute to the Hamburg University. According to him, this does not indicate an eruption in near future. The last eruption of Columbus was in 1650. “Reservoirs” filled with hot water, reaching 200 degrees centigrade, resembling under-water fire places and releasing different kinds of gases- mostly carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide, were found around the volcano. Another reservoir- 5 kilometers wide is situated under the volcano, filled with magma. A liquid, boiling substance is being released by this reservoir, causing the earthquakes and the other phenomena observed by the scientists.

To compare, the other volcano situated nearby is not causing any earthquakes, no release of submarine gases is observed and the gases evolving obove the sea-surface have a temperature of 17 degrees centigrade, i. e., it is in a quiet stage. Columbus is part of the Santorini volcanic center, belonging to the Volcanic group of the South Aegean, together with Susaki, Metana, Milos and Nisiros. This group appeared around 13 years ago when the north part of the African tectonic slab began submerging under Aegean sea’s slab.

Colombia was shaken by 3 volcano eruptions but no evacuations were needed!

2009-07-04T00:25:00.000-05:00

Three volcano eruptions in southwest Colombia sent smoke and ash into the sky and prompted Colombian authorities to declare a red alert in the area.

Authorities believe a larger eruption is imminent from the 14,000 foot Galeras volcano.

It's located about 12 miles southwest of the town of Pasto.

The volcano began spewing ashes Sunday and authorities have declared much of the surrounding area off limits.

No evacuations have been ordered as yet.

Russian volcano erupts!

2009-07-04T00:13:00.000-05:00

A cloud of ash 40 km. by 20 km. (25 x 12.5 miles) has issued from the crater of the Shiveluch volcano on the isolated Russian Kamchatka Peninsula along the Bering Sea, and the column of ash pouring from the volcano reaches 7.7 km. (4.8 miles) above sea level today, Gazeta.ru reports.

The volcano is one of the most active and the northernmost of about 30 live volcanoes on the peninsula. Its eruption has been going on for more than a year, and has gained momentum in the last month and a half. More than 170 localized earthquakes have also been reported at the volcano.

The nearest settlement to the volcano is the village of Klyuchi, 50 km. (31 miles) away. It has a population of 5000 and is not considered endangered by the volcano. Aviation may be disrupted by the eruption, however, RIA Novosti notes. The volcano’s ash, which may fall and cover hundreds of square kilometers in a thin layer, is an irritant to humans and animals. The last major eruption of the volcano was in 1964. It also erupted in 1980-1981, 1993-1995 and 2001-2002.

Kamchatka is also the site of numerous geysers.

The Galeras volcano displays its explosive character in Colombia

2009-07-03T23:44:00.001-05:00

The Galeras volcano located in southern Colombia in the vicinity of Ecuador border has erupted with 'an explosive character'.

No report on possible toll or injuries has been reported so far, but the state-run Geological Mining Institute announced a high-level alert on Sunday due to the explosive feature of the volcano activities, AFP reported.

Authorities are planning to send to safer places an estimated 7,000 people who live at the foot of the spewing volcano which scrapes the sky to an altitude of 4,270 meters (14,029 feet).

A 1993 eruption of Galeras killed nine people, including six scientists who had descended its crater to take gas samples.

Underwater volcanic eruptions witnessed first hand!

2009-07-01T21:37:00.001-05:00

A crack team of "rapid response" volcano experts scrambled to the South Pacific Ocean last month to find something rarely seen by human eyes: an underwater eruption exploding into the inky, cold depths and spewing lava onto the ocean floor.

The realm of underwater volcanic eruptions is a strange, uncharted one. As much as 80 percent of the planet's volcanic activity is thought to occur on the sea floor, but scientists are rarely able to witness the events.

One of the few other undersea volcanoes recorded by researchers was when a series of eruptions near the island of Guam in 2004 vented droplets of liquid carbon dioxide and formed pools of liquid sulfur.

Last November, a team led by Joseph Resing of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle detected a plume of volcanic material floating in the water column, above the Lau Basin, 140 miles southwest of Samoa. On May 6 they returned and sent the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Jason-2 into the abyss, wondering if the fiery theater was still going.

It was. The team saw glowing, red-hot lava creeping out of a vent called Hades on the West Mata volcano, nearly 4,000 feet under water. Ocean water chills lava on contact, forming pillow-shaped rocks that are commonly found on land, but that no one had ever witnessed growing on the ocean floor.

Indonesia: Mount Slamet displays some volcanic activity

2009-07-01T20:15:00.000-05:00

Mount Slamet in Central Java has been showing increasing volcanic activity in the last month, as it continues to erupt and spew lava and hot ash into the air.

An official monitoring the volcano, Luruh Nurkholis, told tempointeraktif.com he logged 60 eruptions on Wednesday night.

He recorded lava sprays, reaching between 50 to 700 meters high above the summit, during night monitoring at a post in Gambuhanm Pemalang.

The alert status for the volcano has been at the second highest level since last month.

The Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation Center (PVMBG) has recommended five regental administrations in Central Java distribute facemasks in anticipation of the spewing of thick ash from the rumbling volcano.

The recommendation to the five regencies — Banyumas, Purbalingga, Pemalang, Tegal and Brebes — was made after the seismic activity of the volcano, which has begun spewing thick ash and molten lava from its crater, increased intensively.

Indonesia: Residents were evacuated due to volcanic eruption

2009-06-14T19:50:00.001-05:00

Residents were evacuated after Mount Karangetang volcano on an eastern Indonesian island began spewing lava and hot ash, threatening a major eruption, officials said Tuesday.

There were no reports of casualties in connection with the increased activity of Mount Karangetang, the officials said.

Volcanologists upgraded the alert status to the highest level on Sunday for the 1,784-metre volcano on the remote island of Siau, part of the Sulawesi chain, about 2,340 kilometres north-east of Jakarta.

Officials said residents were urged to stay outside a radius of 3 kilometres from the crater to avoid possible danger.

Rendy Rompas, an official at North Sulawesi's regional disasters agency, said more than 100 residents from several villages located on the danger zones area had been evacuated, but some of them were allowed to return homes during the day.

Local authorities also ordered a ban on farming and other activity on the slope areas, said Surono, a volcanologist from Indonesia's directorate general of vulcanology, who like many Indonesians goes only by one name. He added that people were also barred from climbing the volcano.

Mount Karangetang is known as the most active volcano in the island chain. Its activity has been increasing for weeks.

The last deadly eruption of Karangetang occurred in 1992, killing at least six villagers.

Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago nation, is prone to seismic upheaval due to its location on the so-called Pacific 'Ring of Fire,' an arc of volcanoes and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin. The country has the world's highest density of volcanoes. Of its 500 volcanos, 128 are active and 65 are listed as dangerous.

Alaska: Volcano could erupt again!

2009-06-14T19:32:00.000-05:00

Since Mt. Redoubt's last explosion in April, it has quietly continued to ooze lava from its vent, creating a massive hardened dome that could blow at any moment and unleash another ashfall on south central Alaska.The volcano's dome, about the size of nine football fields, has formed a precarious plug over its steaming vent, scientists say. That's kept ash from spewing into the atmosphere and has perhaps led many to believe the volcano's rumblings are over.

But if the dome cracks or collapses, as scientists say it likely will, ash could once again blast into the atmosphere and ground airplanes during Alaska's summer tourist season.

A second worry is that a cracked dome, accompanied by another explosion, would allow hot gas and rock to blast down the mountainside, which would melt snow and ice and once again flood the Drift River valley, as it did in late March.

Scientists estimate the amount of lava comprising the hardened dome is so massive it could fill 11 Louisiana Superdomes. It is roughly as thick as a 65-story building.

Alaska lava is not like Hawaii lava or probably what most people picture as lava, said geologist Allison Payne of the Alaska Volcano Observatory. It's not as fluid. It's thick and sticky, she said.

Gravity or the building of pressure beneath the dome could make it collapse, scientists say.

The lava has been building up for two months. The last time the volcano erupted in 1989 and 1990, a similar dome lasted 36 days before it collapsed and unclogged the vent. "Based on Redoubt's past activity, this is pretty unstable," Payne said.

This eruption has shown similar patterns to the one almost two decades ago, which is why scientists eagerly anticipate more rumblings, Payne said.

But when it could blow is anyone's guess. "It could happen in 10 minutes or a month or not at all," she said.

Indonesia may face eruptive summer

2009-06-14T19:13:00.001-05:00

One of Indonesia's most active volcanos is threatening to erupt, officials said Monday, as they ordered residents in nearby villages to leave.

The alert status of Mount Karangetang was raised to the highest level after it started spewing lava and hot ash hundreds of yards (meters) into the air, said state geologist Surono, who goes by only one name.

Local authorities were helping move villagers living near its base to safety, he said.

The 5,853-foot (1,784-meter) volcano on Siau, part of the Sulawesi island chain, last showed signs of intense activity in July 2006, when 4,000 people were evacuated.

It has spit out ash and lava several times since then, but no serious injuries have been reported.

The last deadly eruption was in 1992, when six villagers were killed.

Indonesia, the world's largest archipelago, is located on the so-called Pacific "Ring of Fire," an arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin.

Discovery lead to historic volcanic eruption

2009-05-31T14:02:00.001-05:00

A PREVIOUSLY unknown giant volcanic eruption that led to global mass extinctions 260m years ago has been "discovered" by scientists at the University of Leeds.

They say the eruption in the Emeishan province of south-west China unleashed around half a million cubic kilometres of lava, covering an area five times the size of Wales and triggering global annihilation of marine life.

Because the lava appears today as a distinctive layer of igneous rock containing easily datable fossilised marine life, the scientists were able to pinpoint the timing of the blast.

The fossilised rock shows mass extinction of different life forms, clearly linking the onset of the eruption with an environmental catastrophe.

The collision of fast-flowing lava with shallow sea water caused a violent explosion – throwing huge quantities of sulphur dioxide into the stratosphere.

"When fast-flowing, low-viscosity magma meets shallow sea it's like throwing water into a chip pan – there's a spectacular explosion producing gigantic clouds of steam," said Prof Paul Wignall, a palaeontologist at the University of Leeds, and the lead author of the paper.

The injection of sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere would have led to massive cloud formation spreading around the world – cooling the planet and ultimately resulting in acid rain. Scientists estimate from the fossil record that the disaster happened at the start of the eruption.

"The abrupt extinction of marine life we see in the fossil record firmly links giant volcanic eruptions with global environmental catastrophe," said Prof Wignall.

The work was done in collaboration with the Chinese University of Geosciences in Wuhan and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, UK.

Is there a possible volcanic eruption in store for Yellowstone Park?

2009-05-24T22:00:00.000-05:00

A swarm of earthquakes is one sign that an eruption may be brewing and last winter Yellowstone National Park was rocked by a rash of tremors.

"There were over a thousand earthquakes in about one week," said Park Geologist Hank Heasler. "That isn't unprecedented in the parks history, but it is unusual."

"It was one of the largest swarms in the past 20 years," said USGS Volcanologist Dr. Jake Lowenstern. "It certainly got a lot of people's attention, including ours."

The entire park that exists today is the caldera of the last major eruption 240,000 years ago and experts say that eruption was destructive on a scale like we have never seen before.

"This put out about a thousand times more volcanic material than Mount St. Helens," said Heasler. "To put that in perspective, it's the difference between spending $1,000 and $1,000,000.

That eruption in 1980 in Washington was the deadliest and most destructive volcanic event in the nation's history. 57 people lost their lives in the eruption and volcanic ash was scattered across 12 surrounding states. But experts say another major eruption at Yellowstone would be much more deadly and destructive.

But how will we know if another big eruption is brewing? Dr. Jake Lowenstern is a member of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory which is in charge of monitoring the park's supervolcano. The partnership between Yellowstone National Park, the US Geological Survey, and the University of Utah uses seismograph and ground deformation sensors to keep an eye on what is happening deep underground. Based on their research of the Yellowstone hotspot, the Observatory says another eruption is likely and may even happen in our lifetime. But fortunately for tourists and those living nearby, they say it won't be the big one.

"In a worse case scenario, the big super eruption, is very destructive and would cause a world of hurt to anybody living in the region around Yellowstone and surrounding states," said Lowenstern. "However, the big eruption is not what's most likely to happen here if we do get a volcanic eruption. Much more likely is some localized lava flows that will have an affect within the park. People will need to move out of the way. There will be fires. But people living hundreds of miles away, or even tens of miles outside the park are very unlikely to be affected."

"We have a very sophisticated monitoring system that will give us advanced warning if anything does start to occur," said Heasler. "So the best thing to do is come to the park and enjoy the beauty."

Chile: Danger ruled out by experts despite volcanic activity

2009-05-24T15:28:00.001-05:00

- After the Descabezado Grande volcano in the Maule Region began emitting occasional smoke columns, the regional director of the National Emergency Office (ONEMI), Julio Castiglioni, has ruled out a possible eruption.

According to Radio Cooperativa, the official stated that the smoke columns being emitted by the mountain are within normal range for the volcano’s activity level.

Nevertheless, volcanologists belonging to the National Geology and Mining Service (SERNAGEOMIN) –the organization in charge of monitoring activity levels of the nation's volcanoes–, will travel to the area today.

The Descabezado Grande volcano is located in the San Clemente mountain range and has a height of 3,830 meters.

Mount Vesuvius in action!

2009-05-24T15:22:00.001-05:00

The people who built the houses you see on the slopes of Vesuvius (top photo) are obviously optimists, for the question is always, “Isn’t it about time?” (Of course, you never ask that question aloud because that brings bad luck. Yes, your loud mouth might well cause the next one!)

Well, is it time? With all the pompous weight of scientific certainty, I can now say…uh, maybe. It is instructive to look at the recent history of eruptions for a clue. “Recent” is relative. We can take the last 400 years or so because in geologic terms that is but a heart-beat.

Working back from the present, the last eruption of Vesuvius was in March of 1944. It happened in full view of the Allied armies, which had taken the city of Naples a few months earlier. WWII was still raging further north in Italy when Vesuvius went into what is called an “effusive” eruption (less violent than an “explosive” eruption, but nevertheless dangerous and potentially deadly). That eruption destroyed a number of nearby towns and a U.S. B-25 bomber group parked at the Capodichino airport in Naples. (The volcanic ash rendered the planes useless.)

Eruptions count as major or minor (and everything in between) depending on the extent to which they are explosive or effusive, how much ejecta they produce and the extent to which they change the profile of the volcano, blowing bits and pieces away, adding new craters, new lava flows, etc. Thus, the earlier eruptions of 1929 and 1926 were minor, but they did, for example, add a few new craters and damage nearby structures.

The eruption of April, 1906, was massive and attracted worldwide attention. It killed 100 persons and buried nearby towns. The initial rumblings, however, caused little alarm and locals joked that “the mountain” was just preparing a royal welcome for British King Edward, due in Naples for a visit shortly. He made it just in time for an eruption that dropped the ridge on the main cone some 250 meters. The eruption covered the city of Naples, itself, with ash, and made the roads near the volcano impassable. Residents of destroyed villages fled to Naples, itself, or to nearby towns such as Castellammare. The eruption was followed by heavy rains that produced what geologists now call a lahar (an Indonesian word)—massive mud and ash slides that buried everything in their path. (Some sources reported at the time that it was the most massive eruption since the great explosion that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD. That may be an exaggeration, since the 1872 and the 1631 eruptions were likely to have been at least as powerful.)

The year 1872 produced a massive eruption classified as “explosive/effusive.” It had been preceeded by minor eruptive activity in 1861, 1858, 1855, 1831 and 1824. That time frame spans the foundation of the geological observatory, itself, on the slopes, in 1841. The institution was the brain-child of Macedonio Melloni (1798-1854), who became the first director. It survived the political upheavals that came with the conquest of the Kingdom of Naples and its absorption into the modern nation state of Italy. The directorship then passed to Luigi Palmieri (1807-96), who was on duty constantly during the 1872 eruption. You can see the observatory today and from a distance notice that it sits on a handy knoll with the lava flow of the ‘72 eruption going around it! There were scientific heroics as the director, Prof. Palmieri, refused to leave so he could man the instruments. Palmieri was totally cut-off and alone, but he survived.

A major eruption occurred in 1807; in the 1700s, there were two notable eruptions, 1794 and 1737, both of which destroyed local villages. The 1794 eruption opened crates at relatively low levels on the slopes—at 480 and 320 meters. (The current height of Mt. Vesuvius is 1280 meters.)

The modern cycle of eruptions of Mt. Vesuvius started on Dec. 16, 1631 with an eruption classified as “explosive” (as opposed to the less violent “effusive” or “explosive/effusive”). The volcano had been quiet for some centuries and then simply blew its top. Most sources cite this eruption as the “greatest since Pompeii.” It followed the familiar behavior of an exploding volcano: lava fountains as high as 4 km and an ash column as high as 15 km, which then collapsed onto the slopes producing what is now called a “pyroclastic flow.” It was followed in 1637, ’49, ’52, ’54, and ’60 by lesser eruptions. Some of those were accompanied by earthquakes; indeed, even the dreaded bubonic plague showed up in 1656, lending credence amongst believers to the rumor that the world was coming to an end. It didn’t, of course, and it won’t after the next one. (Uh, I didn’t say that aloud, did I?)

Ecuador: Volcano becomes active after 4 years!

2009-05-24T14:17:00.001-05:00

After four years of inactivity, Galapagos Islands' La Cumbre Volcano spewed lava, gas and smoke on Saturday on Fernandina Island. La Cumbre has an elevation of 4,842 feet.

According to the Geophysical Institute of the National Polytechnic School it has recorded 43 thermal alerts. The institute's satellite images showed a column of gas 60 miles long west of the Galapagos Island. This indicates an increase in volcanic activity.

Fernandina, although uninhabited, is the most active island in the Galapagos archipelago. According to the Galapagos National Park, an eruption will not likely affect residents of the nearby Isabela Island, but it may affect the Galapagos' animal life.

The UNESCO declared in 1978 Galapagos as a World Heritage Site. Charles Darwin formulated his theory of evolution after he studied Galapagos' animal population. Since then, biologists, conservationists and tourists have been attracted to the islands. The Galapagos National Park said 41,000 tourists visited the islands for the first trimester of 2009.

Residents told not to panic as volcano spews ash

2009-05-24T13:52:00.000-05:00

Coastal residents living close to Mount Anak Krakatau, off the Sunda Strait in Lampung, have evacuated to Bandarlampung out of fear of an imminent eruption of the volcano due to increased volcanic activity, despite the fact that its alert status remains at two, our of four.

Sonhaji, 45, a resident of Bawang village, Punduh Pidada district in South Lampung, said he took his family to his relative’s house in Bandarlampung on April 18, as he was afraid Mount Anak Krakatau would have a major eruption, as it has been producing small eruptions over the past week.

“The distance between our village and Anak Krakatau is more than three miles, but the sound of eruption that it produces is very loud, like the sound of a cannon in the middle of the sea,” he said.

“So far it has never emitted such loud blasts and we have been observing that it has often discharged molten lava.”

Sonhaji said fishermen had been afraid to fish around the volcano and the Sunda Strait over the past week.

Residents in Punduh Pidada say they have not heard eruptions as huge as those over the past week since Anak Krakatau was classified as active.

South Lampung Regent Wendy Melfa said his office is coordinating with the Natural Disaster Mitigation Agency in anticipation of the possibility of an eruption.

“The status of the volcano remains alert as of now, but we are helping people to evacuate because they are terrified,” Wendy said.

“We have also informed islanders around the volcano not to panic.”

The Vulcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation Center (PVMBG) in Bandung has set the status of the volcano, situated east in the Sunda Strait, as alert. The last time it showed signs of activity was in mid February, when it erupted up to three times a day.

The seismograph at the Anak Krakatau observation post in Hargopancuran village, Rajabasa district, South Lampung, has recorded 126 eruptions weekly, including 23 deep underground, 82 shallow and 149 hot cloud discharges.

In Bandung, chief of the center’s volcano monitoring team, Muhammad Hendrasto, called on residents not to panic.

“Its activities have yet to increase the current alert level,” he said.

Visual observation from the Pasauran post in Cinangka district, Serang regency in Banten shows greyish ash formations between 200 an 800 meters high.

The formation is monitored by the MITSAT satellite of the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Qantas pilots have also reported the ash formations.

Mount Redoubt is a Media celebrity!

2009-05-24T13:50:00.000-05:00

Everyone continues to keep an eye on Mount Redoubt, including shutterbugs.

Photographers are waiting for the few days when clouds don't obscure the volcano, which began erupting last month.

Clouds gave way on Friday, allowing the entire volcano to be visible for an extended period of time.

That attracted numerous people to flock to pullout points near the volcano - at Kalifornsky Beach Road, Bridge Access Road and the Spur Highway - to snap photos of Mount Redoubt.

Once Pat Porter of Kenai saw the clear view of Mount Redoubt, she turned around and went back to her home to get a camera.

"I've been here for more than 30 years, and I remember the last eruption, but I didn't get any photos. This time around, today was the first time I've been able to get to a camera and get back while it was still out. I wanted to take a few pictures, just to have them," she told the Peninsula Clarion.

Lyle Skrimger of Kenai also was compelled to take photos since the eruption is a rare occurrence.

"It only happens every 20 years, so I wanted to get a few. If I get one worth keeping, I may put it up in the house," he said.

Christine Armond of Kenai, who recently moved from the Midwest, had never seen Mount Redoubt or any other volcano erupt. She wants to share photos of the event with friends and family in the Lower 48.

"You just don't even see mountains back where I'm from, much less a snow-covered volcano giving off steam and ash, so my family and friends back in Oklahoma really love seeing this stuff," she said.

Others had more pressing reasons to shoot the volcano, like Jessica Gonzalez of Niksiki.

She's hoping for a good grade after being assigned a project for a photography class at Kenai Peninsula College.

"It's homework," Gonzalez said, but added that as homework goes - staring at the steaming volcano in the warm rays of the sun and in the soft breeze - it was a pretty enjoyable assignment.

Ready to deal with volcanic ash fall

2009-04-19T17:00:00.002-05:00

Volcanic activities from Mount Redoubt in the last two months have provided many planning and training opportunities for Airmen here.

Elmendorf's Heating Ventilation and Air Condition section has its own plan and ideas for dangerous ash fall here. In the case of volcano eruptions, with varying conditions, the average reaction time HVAC specialists have is around two hours. By then, they have to set all their plans and training into motion.

"We have a Direct Digital Control system of our HVAC equipment," said Johnny Perry, the 3rd Civil Engineer Squadron HVAC work leader. The DDC, according to Perry, is connected to approximately 110 buildings on base. The DDC has the ability to shut down all HVAC equipment attached to the building, meaning that all heating or air-conditioning, air ducts, boilers, and etc. will be shut down. Not only will this process shut down the heat and the AC, but it will also stop all air intakes into the buildings. "It's almost a push button operation were we can turn off noncritical facilities as far as air handling facilities are concerned. It'll shut down the ventilation ... so we don't draw in air from the contaminated ash area," he said.

With the DDC active, the HVAC work leaders, as well as the other HVAC members who have the proper authority, may access and shut down specific equipment as needed.

If the condition gets to an even worse state, the DDC also has the ability to shut down critical equipment and facilities too. "We have a secondary shut down and a primary shut down, which shuts down everything, and then we can bring it all back up safely," said Perry.

The DDC is convenient for the HVAC team because, for them, it is easily accessible. "It's a browser-based program that is accessed from any computer around the world, if you have the access level to get into the system," said John Elsholz, a 3rd CES HVAC work leader. "One click gets it quick, that's my motto," he said in reference to the DDC system.

HVAC team members do have access to most equipment and buildings on base, but some of the older buildings have yet to be added to the DDC. Since these buildings are not fitted with the DDC, the team must manually check or shut down necessary systems. "We dispatch crews based on a priority listing that we have in the shop," said Perry.

All of the manual shut downs must be finished within the two-hour window from when the volcano first erupted and an ash cloud is headed toward the base. The HVAC team will first determine if the systems can be run without damage before they shut down the systems. If ash fall is going to be damaging to the systems or is around one-eighth of an inch or one-quarter of an inch the team will begin to shut down the systems.

While there is a lot of work to be accomplished in little time, the HVAC team does have some words of wisdom for those Airmen that would like to help. "We prefer to do it ourselves rather than having our customers go out there and do it," said Perry as he leaned back in his chair. "We don't want them to accidently turn off equipment that shouldn't be turned off."

The HVAC team said the best thing that any Airmen can do to aid them in their job is to follow the ash fall prevention operations that have already begun around the base. Base members should be doing things like covering electronic equipment with plastic or checking windows for drafts, and covering and reporting broken windows and doors. Also, Airmen can help by turning off circulating fans or any other air flow devices.

The HVAC team has been doing its best to keep Airmen safe and comfortable to get the mission accomplished in these arctic conditions, and uncertainty of the next volcanic eruption.

Mexican volcano displays some activity

2009-04-19T16:56:00.001-05:00

It might be (and is likely) just normal behavior for Popocatépetl in Mexico, but the volcano produced six plumes over the last 24 hours, according to a report out of Mexico City (in spanish). Officials from El Centro Nacional de Prevención de Desastres (The National Center for the Prevention of Disasters - Cenapred) say that the plumes appear to be mostly water vapor and other volcanic gases, but remind people living near the volcano to be vigilant.

Popocatépetl is only 70 km from Mexico City, so any major eruption from the volcano could affect life and air travel to the major metropolis. The last major eruptive period at Popocatépetl ran from 1996-2003, producing VEI 3 eruptions, but the volcano has been producing smaller eruptions since January 2005. The volcano produces a mixed bag of activity, with ash fall, lava flows, pyroclastic flows and lahar generation and might be one of the more hazardous volcanoes in the Americas.

Mount Redoubt and sunsets?

2009-04-19T15:34:00.000-05:00

Mount Redoubt, a volcano situated to the southwest of Anchorage, Alaska, has erupted several times in the past month.

The strongest eruption had an ash cloud that rose to around 65,000 feet, with nearly a dozen other eruptions spewing ash to 60,000 feet. If Mount Redoubt behaves as it has in the past it may continue this pattern for several more months.

It has been known for years that volcanic activity can influence weather patterns around the globe. The ash and other aerosols released into the atmosphere from volcanoes can block a portion of the Sun’s energy from striking the Earth, which has historically caused a net cooling of the planet. As of now, Mount Redoubt has not released enough ash for this to be a concern.

Volcanic ash has another effect – brilliant sunsets – and some of the ash may end up over our area this week, so be on the lookout for brighter evening colors.

Chilean volcano erupts!

2009-04-19T15:32:00.001-05:00

Chile's Llaima volcano, one of the most active in South America, spewed out a river of lava more than 1,100 yards (1,000 metres) long on Saturday in a fresh eruption, prompting officials to order dozens of people to evacuate.

Llaima, which lies in Chile's picturesque lake region about 435 miles (700 km) south of the capital Santiago, erupted on Jan. 1, 2008, and has belched rock and ash sporadically since then.

The lava and hot gases from the latest eruption are melting snow on the sides of the volcano, and authorities say some towns are in danger of being hit by mudslides.

"We are going to start the evacuation of some people who live in sectors that are particularly vulnerable to the risk of ... avalanches of mud due to melting snow," Johaziel Jamett, head of the early warning center at the National Emergency Office, told Reuters.

"It is a spread-out population. We are talking about a few dozen people, not a massive evacuation," he said.

Twelve people have been evacuated from the Conguillio national park surrounding Llaima, including two tourists. Police have closed the park, and troops have been dispatched to the area, the emergency office said.

MINIMAL DAMAGE

It said an ash-swollen river near the volcano had swept away a pedestrian bridge, but there was no other damage. Bright red bursts of lava were visible in the night sky as Llaima erupted.

The office said on its website that there were "permanent explosions that reach 600 metres (650 yards) above the crater. Falling ash is visible and ... a flow of lava of more than 1,000 metres (1,100 yards) has been observed."

Chile's chain of some 2,000 volcanoes is the world's second-largest after Indonesia. Some 50 to 60 are on record as having erupted, and 500 are potentially active.

The 10,253-foot (3,127-metre) Llaima was the second to erupt in the past year.

The Chaiten volcano, 760 miles (1,200 km) south of Santiago in the Patagonia region, erupted last May for the first time in thousands of years, spewing ash, gas and molten rock and prompting the evacuation of thousands of people.

Ash from Chaiten soared 20 miles (32 km) into the sky, swelled rivers and caused floods that damaged dozens of houses and destroyed much of the nearby town of the same name.

Chaiten erupted again in February, leading to the evacuation of residents who had rejected a government plan to abandon the town and rebuild it a few miles (km) away.

(Editing by Xavier Briand)

Volcanic eruption could be catastrophic for fisheries

2009-04-19T15:30:00.001-05:00

After days of quiet, Alaska's Mount Redoubt volcano roared back to life Saturday morning with a new eruption that pumped smoke and ash 50,000 feet into the atmosphere, the Alaska Volcano Observatory reports.

The eruption comes just after officials had given the go-ahead to remove millions of gallons of crude oil from an oil storage facility 20 miles downriver from the mountain.

There are concerns that the terminal, where more than 6 million gallons of oil is stored in two tanks, could be damaged and cause a catastrophic oil spill that would damage Cook Inlet's valuable fisheries.

Original plans called for the oil to be transferred Saturday from two large tanks to a tanker ship and leave nearly 1.7 million gallons in each tank. Some oil needs to remain in the tanks to prevent them from becoming buoyant and floating away if there was a flood, according to the Coast Guard and officials with the Cook Inlet Pipeline Co. The tanks now are each holding 3.1 million gallons.

It was not immediately clear how the morning's blast would affect those plans.

A flash flood warning was issued for the Drift River, which flows from the mountain and passes by the oil storage terminal.

Air traffic in and out of Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula was operating normally as of 8:30 a.m.

This morning's blast comes a day after the Alaska Volcano Observatory lowered the threat level from "warning" to "watch," after activity quieted.

Mount Redoubt began erupting on March 22. Since then, the volcano 100 miles southwest of Anchorage has produced numerous large explosions that have sent mud and rock cascading down its flanks. Some of that mud and debris has reached the Drift River Terminal, 22 miles away.

More funding needed for monitoring volcanoes

2009-04-19T15:27:00.000-05:00

Sen. Lisa Murkowski has the right approach to secure funding for volcano observations — make it part of a national program.

Former Sen. Ted Stevens successfully earmarked money for many years to make the Alaska Volcano Observatory an effective early warning system and scientific enterprise. But it was never just about Alaska.

So much national and international air traffic passes through Alaska airspace that up-to-date tracking of volcanic hazards should be a national priority.

Besides, Alaska has no monopoly on smoking mountains. Other parts of the country deserve watching as well. The most violent volcanic explosion in recent memory occurred not in Alaska. It blew the top of Mount St. Helens in Washington on May 18, 1980. The ash blanketed much of the Pacific Northwest.

Having an effective detection and monitoring system in place for such events makes sense.

Mount Redoubt’s recent eruption couldn’t have been better timed as a rebuttal to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s mocking of volcano monitoring during his response to President Barack Obama’s first address to Congress.

Jindal seemed too ironic as the chief scold on this subject, since his state benefits from an extensive federal program designed to detect hurricanes. He would mock that effort at his political peril, and for good reason. It’s worth having the information.

Jindal, to his credit, claimed he was objecting not to the monitoring itself but rather to its inclusion in the stimulus funding package. That’s a reasonable point, but it wasn’t how it came across at the time.

It’s unlikely that the expenditures for volcano monitoring will match those devoted to hurricane monitoring, and that’s fine. Volcanic eruptions are less frequent and less destructive, most of the time. They still bear watching, and the federal government is the appropriate entity to pay for the eyes.

UPS services affected by volcanic eruptions in Alaska

2009-04-03T14:44:00.001-05:00

Volcanic activity at Alaska's Mount Redoubt has caused UPS to reschedule or relocate some flights, but the company says that hasn't had a major impact on its ability to deliver packages.

Anchorage, about 100 miles northeast of the volcano, is the UPS gateway to and from Asia. The volcano spewed ash 15,000 feet or more into the air before erupting Tuesday.

UPS has been getting about three flights a day into Anchorage to serve customers in that area, flying mainly in daylight hours for safety reasons, spokesman Mike Mangeot said.

Instead of using Anchorage as a jumping-off point for Asia, the company has shifted those flights to Seattle, Portland and Honolulu until the volcano quiets down, Mangeot said.

ResCare buys company in Washington state

ResCare said yesterday that it was increasing its West Coast footprint by acquiring a company that provides assistance and services to more than 1,200 people in Washington state.

Louisville-based ResCare said it's buying Home Care of Washington, a Spokane company that offers personal care, housekeeping, meal preparation and other home services in 10 counties. Annual revenues are expected to be $20 million, ResCare said, but other terms were not provided.

Sypris Solutions' lossesrise during restructuring

Sypris Solutions, a Louisville-based manufacturer, reported a loss of $122.25 million, or $6.65 a share, in the three months ended Dec. 31, including one-time charges related to its restructuring.

In the final three months of 2007, Sypris lost $2.2 million, or 12 cents a share. Revenue declined to $94.5 million, from $103.7 million the year before.

For the year, revenue fell to $411.3 million from $435.9 million in 2007. Including charges, for the year Sypris posted a loss of $130.6 million, or $7.11 a share, compared with a 2007 loss of $2.1 million, or 12 cents a share.

Plant consolidations and other downsizings "are now ahead of schedule," Jeffrey Gill, Sypris president and chief executive, said in a statement. Completion is expected in the second half of the year.

Alaska: Another volcanic eruption!

2009-04-02T15:44:00.000-05:00

Mount Redoubt Volcano, 106 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska, erupted explosively more than 10 times the week of March 23, sending ash skyrocketing as high as 65,000 feet into the air.

The eruption of Redoubt poses a threat to national and international aviation as volcanic ash is sent into the busy North Pacific flight paths between North America and Asia. Ash fall has been reported in towns and cities around Cook Inlet, including a trace in Anchorage. Volcanic activity is expected to continue for days to months.

Scientists from the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) issued daily public warnings of an impending eruption beginning January 23 after recording increased seismic activity at the volcano. They continue to monitor events round-the-clock, working with colleagues at the National Weather Service and Federal Aviation Administration to minimize social and economic disruption caused by the eruption.

Mount Redoubt Volcano has been assessed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) as one of the nation's highest-threat volcanoes. USGS is working to place monitoring equipment on all volcanoes that pose the greatest threats to public safety.

Redoubt last erupted explosively nearly 20 years ago, sending ash plumes 40,000 feet into the air and causing engine failure in a 747 jet, which eventually landed safely.

For the latest information, go to http://www.avo.alaska.edu/activity/Redoubt.php.

Ash radar, quite a tool!

2009-04-01T23:07:00.000-05:00

Although the Mount Redoubt volcano color code was lowered from orange to yellow a few weeks ago, about the time scientists brought a volcanic ash radar dish to Kenai, it didn't take long for the new device to prove its worth.

All set up and ready to go, the radar went to work tracking ash from several Redoubt eruptions last week.

"We've been using it; it's working really well," said geophysicist David Schneider with the U.S. Geological Survey's Alaska Volcano Observatory in Anchorage, on Friday.

"It's been a nice tool," he said.

The radar, erected March 12 at Kenai Municipal Airport, measures the amount of ash emitted and the velocity of the erupting plume, giving geophysicists and other volcanologists a sound idea of where the ash cloud will head presenting a severe navigational hazard to aviators and a potential health hazard to beings on the ground.

The equipment consists of a 20-foot conex trailer converted into an office and an 8-foot radar dish on a pedestal inside a 14-foot diameter golf ball-shaped dome. The radar is set up near the airport operations building and is operated remotely from the AVO in Anchorage.

By measuring reflectives in the ash cloud, the Doppler radar can detect the velocity of things coming out of the volcano -- how fast the particles are moving -- so scientists can determine the amount of turbulence generated by an eruption, Schneider said earlier.

This is the first time this system has been deployed to look at a volcano. It was originally purchased in 2004 around the time of the most recent Mount St. Helens eruption and was shipped to Kenai from the Cascades Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Wash.

"It's giving us more confidence in interpreting data," Schneider said. "To be able to see the particles over the mountain is helpful."

The National Weather Service has another weather radar -- NEXRAD -- based in Nikiski, and Schneider said readings from the ash radar can be compared with readings from that one.

Other equipment deployed by the vulcanologists includes pressure sensors that can detect pressure waves coming off the volcano's explosive events, Schneider said.

Some episodes also are seen seismically.

"The radar allows us to see the ash at altitude to determine the magnitude of the eruption," he said.

Studying the data from all sources allows AVO to provide as accurate a forecast product as possible.

"We try to be 100 percent all the time," Schneider said. "That's a pretty high standard."

During last week's eruptions, views of Mount Redoubt from the Kenai Peninsula were obscured by clouds much of the time, but Schneider said the volcanic ash radar can see through the clouds.

"When the ash cloud appears (on the radar) we can track it instantly," he said.

When asked why central Kenai Peninsula residents are not feeling or hearing anything from the recent eruptions, especially when links from the AVO Web site report such facts as the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption being 500 times as strong as the nuclear bomb blast at Hiroshima, Schneider said comparing last week's eruptions to the Mount St. Helens eruption is like apples to oranges.

"These eruptions are orders of magnitude smaller than the May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens eruption," he said. "If we had anything like that, you'd feel it."

Schneider again thanked the city of Kenai and the airport for allowing AVO to park the equipment there and provide electrical power.

"I can't say enough how helpful the airport has been to us," he said.

On Friday, airport Manager Mary Bondurant said the morning eruptions caused Grant Aviation and Era to once again suspend all flights from Kenai at least through late afternoon. The Anchorage airport was shut down from Saturday to Sunday afternoon and some flights were cancelled following ash fall events Monday.

"The best advice for travelers is still to call their airline first, before heading to the airport," Bondurant said.

Phil Hermanek can be reached at phillip.hermanek@peninsulaclarion.com.

Anchorage's airport reopened following eruption

2009-04-01T22:59:00.001-05:00

Alaska's Mount Redoubt volcano shot ash thousands of feet into the air Monday, the latest in a series of emissions that has dusted the state's largest city, Anchorage, and disrupted operations at Anchorage's airport.

Ash from Alaska's Mount Redoubt volcano has been affecting airport operations.

The "ash emission event" happened at 9:44 a.m. (1:44 p.m. ET) "and produced an ash plume to about 27,000 feet above sea level," the Alaska Volcano Observatory reported. "The event lasted for about 10 minutes."

The volcano began a series of eruptions March 22. The observatory last week reported ash clouds as high as 65,000 feet.

Mount Redoubt erupted three times Saturday, shooting ash to 51,000 feet above sea level.

That prompted the closure of Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport, the Federal Aviation Administration said. Only a trace amount of the ash reached the airport grounds, airport spokesman Jeremy Lindseth said, but it was enough to affect operations.

The airport reopened about 2 p.m. (6 p.m. ET) Sunday with one of its three runways operating, airport officials said. A second runway opened about three hours later. The third runway was expected to reopen by Tuesday, officials said.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory set its alert level at red, the highest designation. That level indicates that an eruption is under way or imminent and that the eruption will produce a "significant emission of volcanic ash into the atmosphere."

Alaska: Lava dome could cause eruption

2009-04-01T22:52:00.000-05:00

Geologists said Tuesday that a dome was building in Mount Redoubt's crater, which could collapse and trigger another eruption.

"The difficult thing with these dome-building eruptions -- it is very difficult to give short-term warning because these things can go unstable and fail very quickly, putting an ash plume up to significant heights," geophysicist Stephanie Prejean said.

When a similar dome-building episode occurred on Redoubt in 1989 and 1990, the mountain erupted some 20 times, according to geologists with the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

Their best guess: Redoubt is not finished yet. The AVO says it is now clear magma has reached the surface, and that's what is contributing to the dome-building in Redoubt's crater.

Some of the ash samples they collected Tuesday from the Drift River Valley contained pumice, which also indicates magma has found its way to the surface.

Geologists got their first good look at the area around Mount Redoubt on Tuesday, more than a full day after the volcano began erupting late Sunday night with the first of six violent explosions.

The most recent eruption came at about 7:41 p.m. Monday, and mudflows have surrounded a Cook Inlet oil terminal, which had to be evacuated.

The eruptions scattered ash across a wide swath of the Susitna Valley, but evidence of the eruptions is more dramatic on the mountain's flanks.

In a flight over the area Tuesday, officials with the Alaska Volcano Observatory couldn't see Redoubt's summit -- but they could see the eruptions' fallout, starting high on the mountain on the Drift Glacier.

"There was a huge flow of muddy water cascading down the middle of the Drift Glacier, cutting a deep channel in the glacier with some really impressive waterfalls," AVO research geologist Kristi Wallace said. "So this is really muddy, sediment-laden water."

From the glacier the mudflows swept through the Drift Valley, uprooting some trees and stripping others of limbs and bark. The flows, a mile wide in some spots, continue on to Cook Inlet.

As of 11 p.m. Tuesday, there were no ash fall advisories in effect and flights in and out of Ted Stevens International Airport remained unaffected. But with more eruptions a strong possibility, that all remains subject to change.

Ash has primarily scattered to the north of Redoubt and has been reported as far north as Healy near Denali National Park, and even Delta Junction.

Contact Jason Moore at jmoore@ktuu.com

Alaska: Volcanic activity affects oil terminal

2009-04-01T22:51:00.001-05:00

Chevron Corp.’s Drift River oil terminal in Alaska has been shut down following extensive flooding in the area from a volcano eruption earlier this week, a state government agency said.

The terminal supplies Tesoro Corp.’s Kenai refinery, Mickey Driver, a spokesman for Chevron, said in a telephone interview. The terminal handles 8,200 barrels of crude oil a day from Exxon Mobil Corp., Pacific Energy Resources and Chevron, said Driver.

Chevron has not shut in production from the Cook Inlet and can store between seven and 10 days of output near platforms, according to Driver.

No spill has yet to be found, from tanks holding 145,000 barrels of Cook Inlet crude oil on site, according to the report from the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

The terminal and related pipeline were shut early March 23 following the eruption of Mount Redoubt. The terminal can hold at least 1 million barrels.

The Cook Inlet pipeline to the terminal has a capacity of 225,000 barrels of crude a day, and mainly serves the local refinery market, according to Chevron’s Web site.

The Tesoro refinery can process 72,000 barrels of crude oil a day, according to the company’s Web site.

Flights cancelled in Anchorade due to volcanic eruption

2009-04-01T22:43:00.001-05:00

Alaska Airlines said it’s cancelled 19 flights due to the eruption of the Mount Redoubt volcano near Anchorage.

Nineteen flights into Anchorage and flights out of the city were cancelled “as a safety precaution related to the pattern of ash at altitude created by the eruption of Mount Redoubt,” the airline said.

Alaska Airlines, a subsidiary of Alaska Air Group Inc. (NYSE: ALK) of Seattle, operates up to 50 flights a day in to Anchorage.

“We recognize these cancellations will significantly impact our customers intending to travel to or from Alaska,” said Ben Minicucci, COO and vice president of operations for Alaska Airlines, in a statement.

Red alert for volcano in Alaska

2009-04-01T22:32:00.002-05:00

Alaska volcano eruptions continue, while the largest was recorded on Sunday night. The explosion occurred from four to thirty minutes. While it is not clear how long Mount Redoubt will continue to erupt, the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) isn't taking any chances.

"It's coming down," Rita Jackson said, about 50 miles north of Anchorage.

Alaska volcano eruption ashfall could be found 50 miles away from the core.

Ash deposits could be found on cars within a 50 mile radius. AVO has received no new reports of ash emission since early Monday morning. Ash fall advisories have been posted by the National Weather Service.

Redoubt continues to be at a red alert level while seismic activity is elevated. The AVO reports that ash clouds reached 60,000 feet above sea level, with ash volumes between 25 - 30,000 feet above sea level. Traces of ash fall have been reported in Skwentna, Talkeetna, Wasilla, and Trapper Creek.

The last Alaska volcano eruption caused melting of the Drift glacier which discharged down the Drift River. The eruptions were preceded by approximately 60 hours of discrete earthquakes under the volcano. AVO raised the Aviation Color Code/Alert Level from YELLOW/ADVISORY to ORANGE/WATCH on Saturday.

Mount Redoubt showed signs of volcanic unrest since the beginning of Fall 2008. The unrest had escalated in late January 2009. Last Sunday's volcano eruption produced the first ash which raised the alert level to RED/ADVISORY.

The AVO cautioned that further explosive activity could occur with little or no warning. Volcanic eruptions could occur intermittently for weeks or months. Sunday's eruption produced 40 to 50 earthquakes each hour.

Alaska: Volcano erupted 6 times already!

2009-04-01T22:20:00.000-05:00

By MARY PEMBERTON Associated Press Writer

WILLOW, Alaska (AP) - Alaska's Mount Redoubt volcano erupted Monday night for a sixth time in less than 24 hours, sending an ash plume more than 9 miles into the air in the volcano's first emissions in nearly 20 years.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory reported that the sixth eruption came at 7:41 p.m. Monday. Web cameras showed steaming from the summit after the ash emission ended, the observatory said.

The five earlier eruptions came late Sunday night into Monday morning.

Residents in Anchorage, the state's largest city, were spared from falling ash, though fine gray dust fell early Monday on small communities north of Anchorage. The National Weather Service forecast more light ashfall in the same area through Tuesday morning.

"It's coming down," Rita Jackson, 56, said Monday morning at a 24-hour grocery store in Willow, about 50 miles north of Anchorage. She slid her fingers across the hood of her car, through a dusting of ash.

Ash from Alaska's volcanos is like a rock fragment with jagged edges and has been used as an industrial abrasive. It can injure skin, eyes and breathing passages. The young, the elderly and people with respiratory problems are especially susceptible to ash-related health problems. Ash can also cause damage engines in planes, cars and other vehicles.

Alaska Airlines on Monday canceled 19 flights because of the ash. In-state carrier Era Aviation canceled four, and Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage kept 60 planes, including fighter jets, cargo aircraft and a 747 commercial plane, in shelters.

Five of 20 Alaska state senators were scheduled on the morning flight from Anchorage to Juneau, which was canceled. As a result, consideration of legislation, including a resolution accepting federal stimulus funds, was delayed.

The first eruption, in a sparsely populated area across Cook Inlet from the Kenai Peninsula, occurred at 10:38 p.m. Sunday and the fifth happened at 4:30 a.m. Monday, according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

The wind took the ash cloud away from Anchorage, toward Willow and Talkeetna, near Mount McKinley, North America's largest mountain.

There were reports of a quarter-inch of ash in Trapper Creek and up to a half-inch at a lakeside lodge near Skwentna.

Dave Stricklan, a hydrometeorogical technician with the National Weather Service, said the ash falling at a distance was likely "just kind of a light dusting." He said the significant amount of ash probably dropped immediately, right down the side of the volcano.

"The heavier stuff drops out very quickly, and then the other stuff filters out. There's going to be a very fine amount of it that's going to be suspended in the atmosphere for quite some time," he said. "The finer ash is going to travel farther, and any ash can affect aviation safety."

Jackson said she was taking a sip of coffee when she tasted something funny on her lips - ash. She was experiencing other effects, too.

"My eyes are itching really bad," she said as she hurried to get out of the store and to her car.

Jackson, who unexpectedly got the day off, hurried home from the grocery store to secure a motorcycle, snowmachine and vehicles under protective blue tarps.

The 10,200-foot Redoubt Volcano, roughly 100 miles southwest of Anchorage, last erupted during a four-month period from 1989-90.

In its last eruption, Redoubt sent ash 150 miles away into the path of a KLM jet and its four engines flamed out. The jet dropped more than 2 miles before the crew was able to restart all engines and land safely. The plane required $80 million in repairs.

The volcano became restless earlier this year. The observatory had warned in late January that an eruption could occur at any time.

Increased earthquake activity prompted scientists to raise the alert level for Mount Redoubt on Sunday.

On Sunday morning, 40 to 50 earthquakes were being recorded every hour.

A steam plume rising about 1,000 feet above the mountain peak was observed Saturday.

Three seismometers on the mountain were damaged in the eruption but seven others remained in place, said observatory geophysicist John Power.

Power said the history of past eruptions of Redoubt indicate the volcano could erupt again in the next few days or weeks.

"It's something we need to stay prepared for," he said.

---

Associated Press Writers Dan Joling and Mark Thiessen in Anchorage contributed to this report.

Flights resume in Fairbanks following volcanic activity

2009-04-01T22:18:00.000-05:00

Flights in and out of Fairbanks have resumed today after being halted on Monday by ash clouds from Mount Redoubt volcano, according to Alaska Airlines.

Sixteen late-night and early-morning flights to Alaska were canceled due to another eruption of Redoubt late Monday.

Airplanes wrapped in a protective plastic sealant and stationed overnight in Anchorage were unwrapped this morning, inspected and prepared for passenger flights. The sealant is designed to protect aircraft from abrasive ash particles.

Travelers may check status of flights at www.alaskaair.com or 800-ALASKAAIR. The airline says delays and cancellations are still possible pending further volcanic activity.

Underwater volcanic eruption disrupted flights in New Zealand

2009-04-01T21:49:00.001-05:00

Flights were disrupted and airlines placed on alert after an undersea volcano erupted off the coast of Tonga and shot clouds of smoke, steam and ash thousands of metres into the sky.

Both Airways New Zealand which manages air traffic and MetService have issued a warning to aircraft flying in the area. New Zealand flights were forced to fly around or over the ash and smoke, which reached up to 15,000 metres, an Airways NZ spokeswoman said.

Volcanic ash cannot be detected by planes' weather radar but can cause multiple engine failure. In 1990, a KLM Boeing 747 lost all four engines while flying through a volcanic ash cloud in Alaska.

The Tongan volcano, which is believed to have erupted on Monday, spewed columns of ash from the sea about 10km from the southwest coast off the main island of Tongatapu, where up to 36 undersea volcanoes are clustered, said Tonga's geological service head, Keleti Mafi.

"It's a very significant eruption, on quite a large scale."

Trade winds were blowing gas and steam away from the island so there was no danger to residents.

Colombia: Volcanic eruption causes evacuation

2009-04-01T21:35:00.000-05:00

A volcano in southwestern Colombia has erupted for the third time in a month, sending a column of smoke up to five miles above the rim (eight kilometers) and spewing ash on nearby towns. No damages or injuries have been reported.

The two eruptions of Mount Galeras on Friday marked the third time the volcano has come to life recently. It also erupted on Feb. 14 and Feb. 20.

On Feb. 14, the eruption blanketed the nearby provincial capital of Pasto in ash and prompted the evacuation of 7,000 people living in its shadow.

Friday's eruptions also led officials to prepare shelters for nearby residents as a preventive measure. A volcanic observatory in Pasto reported that ash fell in different directions over towns closest to the volcano.

What is the purpose of volcano monitoring?

2009-03-15T17:32:00.001-05:00

In a speech full of criticism for President Barack Obama's stimulus plan, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal singled out one program for particular scorn. "Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington," Jindal said, deriding the $140 million appropriated to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for "something called volcano-monitoring" as one of the most egregious bits of pork to lard up the $787 billion stimulus package. But to those who live under the looming threat of flowing lava, it was a poor punch line. "Does the governor have a volcano in his backyard?" sneered Royce Pollard, the mayor of Vancouver, Wash. Since most of us don't, TIME asked Marianne Guffanti, a senior volcanologist at the USGS, to explain the dangers volcanic eruptions can pose, how to spot them before they happen and why being vigilant can be vital.

Can you explain what you do?
Let me walk you through what's happening at our Alaska volcano observatory, one of five in the country. [The others are in Yellowstone National Park, Washington State, Hawaii, and Long Valley, California.] We have seismic networks and other geophysical equipment monitoring a number of volcanoes in Alaska, including Redoubt Volcano, 100 miles southwest of Anchorage. The volcano is showing a lot of signs of unrest that probably presage an eruption. So we look at seismic data, webcams, radar data and satellite imagery; we make overflights in airplanes to observe; we take gas measurements. We try to pull all this information together to give the public the best practical information we have about what's likely to happen — whether we think it's going to erupt, whether signs of unrest are minor and will diminish — so that people can plan.

How precise can you be with your forecasting?
Once the volcano starts erupting, we get better and better. An eruption is usually episodic — there's some activity, then a pause. The hard part is pinpointing where it first starts up. We use a graduated alert system. Right now, Redoubt Volcano is at orange. At orange, the military might move some planes out of a vulnerable airport. I read that trucking companies are buying ash filters. When it's red, we hope to give them hours of warning.

Can you explain in layman's terms what indicators you're looking for?
The process we're following is the rise of magma from depth to the surface. That gives off signs. One of the most basic is earthquake activity. Magma, as it rises, breaks rock to make room for itself. As the pressure lowers on it, it degases; it's like opening a pop bottle. We pick up the vibrations from the gas and magma. Since the magma has to make space for itself as it rises, the surface of the volcano deforms and we can look for those deformations. Then that gas makes its way out of the ground into the atmosphere, and we can measure it there. At Redoubt, for example, it's melting glacial features. We have to put all of this together and make an estimate.

What may we not be aware of in terms of the hazards posed by volcanoes — both for people living in their shadows or for someone like me who lives thousands of miles away from one?
If you live close to a volcano, you have to be worried about flowing lava, flowing mud. Mudflows can go quite a distance — 100 km — down river valleys. If you live farther away, you're not going to be directly affected by those hazards, but you could very well be affected by the ashfall, which can travel a distance of hundreds of miles. Ash has also erupted with great force into the stratosphere. That's where jets are flying, and encounters between aircraft and ash clouds can be damaging and life-threatening. This ash is not like ash from a fireplace: it's little, pulverized pieces of volcanic glass that can melt in jet engines. The combination has stopped airplane engines midflight. Fortunately we're good at dealing with this hazard now. If you fly from Chicago to Tokyo, there are people watching out for you behind the scenes; you'll never know you diverted around a potential ash cloud.

How will you allocate the $140 million Governor Jindal cited during his speech?
That money is for many other projects besides ours. We will get a very small portion of this money.

So the governor was incorrect?
He was incorrect in ascribing the full amount to volcano-monitoring. [But] what we'll do is use a lot of the money for maintenance and modernization of our monitoring networks. We're trying to play catch-up. In the U.S., there are 169 active volcanoes or volcanoes that are capable of reawakening and 65 historically active volcanoes. In the last 30 years, there have been over 90 eruptions from U.S. volcanoes.

You can't stave off an eruption. How do you measure success and failure?
First, we want to save lives. If there's an evacuation needed, a civil authority will call it, but we want to give them the best information so that people can be moved out of harm's way. The other category is minimizing economic and social disruption during the period of unrest surrounding an eruption. If you've got volcano unrest and you don't know the extent of the eruption, you really tend to overreact when you don't need to. We can also give practical information — telling people about ash flow or when a mudflow is coming down a river valley — that has really high stakes. In 1985, an entire town in Colombia, Armero, was obliterated and [about] 23,000 people were buried alive when a relatively small eruption melted snow and ice on a volcano and sent it rushing down this river valley. Scientists knew the eruption had occurred, but the communications process broke down. People in bed or watching a soccer game were buried alive.

The worst can happen. It usually doesn't, but in large part that's because we have taken seriously these past disasters and tried to learn from them. I sometimes think we're victims of our own success. We have been able to mitigate the adverse affects of volcanoes through science. There have been no crashes of aircraft because we've gotten pretty good at diverting them. The hazard is what it's always been. Our ability to deal with it has improved.

What did you think of Jindal's comments?
Let me just say that my colleagues and I take our job and our mission very seriously. We are always ready and willing to explain what we do and defend what we do, because we believe in what we do. I'll leave it at that.

Chile: Chaiten volcano displays some activity!

2009-03-14T15:59:00.001-05:00

The Andes Mountains along the western coastline of South America include numerous active stratovolcanoes (steep-sided, cone-shaped volcanoes).

The majority of these volcanoes were formed and are still fed by magma generated as the Nazca tectonic plate under the southeastern Pacific Ocean moves northeastward and plunges beneath the South American continental plate — a process known as subduction. The line of Andean volcanoes marks the approximate location of the subduction zone.

This astronaut photograph highlights two volcanoes located near the southern boundary of the Nazca–South America subduction zone in southern Chile. Dominating the scene is the massive Minchinmávida Volcano ( upper right). Charles Darwin observed an eruption of this glaciated volcano during his Galapagos Islands voyage in 1834; the last recorded eruption took place the following year. When this photo was taken, the white, snow-covered summit of Minchinmávida was blanketed by gray ash erupted from its much smaller but now-active neighbor to the west, Chaitén Volcano.

Chaitén Volcano is dominated by a large lava dome within a caldera (an emptied and collapsed magma chamber beneath a volcano). With no recorded history of eruptions, Chaitén roared back to life unexpectedly on May 2, 2008, generating dense ash plumes and forcing the evacuation of the nearby town of Chaitén. Volcanic activity continued at Chaitén in early 2009; several days before this astronaut photograph was taken, a new lava dome partially collapsed and generated a pyroclastic flow (a scalding avalanche of gas, ash, and rock debris). A steam and ash plume extended northeast from the eruptive center of the volcano at the time of this image.

(Astronaut photograph ISS018-E-35716 was acquired on February 24, 2009, with a Nikon D2Xs digital camera fitted with a 180 mm lens, and is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment and the Image Science & Analysis Laboratory, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by the Expedition 18 crew. The image in this article has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast. Lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption William L. Stefanov, NASA-JSC.)

Volcanic smoke put farmers on hold!

2009-03-14T15:46:00.001-05:00

Leafless monkey pod and browning Norfolk pine trees litter Ted Seaman's nursery in the small town of Pahala on the southern edge of Hawaii's largest island.

At fault are the noxious fumes that have been pouring out of the Kilauea volcano in unprecedented volumes since last spring.

"You can only go so far before you say forget it," said Seaman, who has since taken a job trimming trees. The 53-year-old is focused on saving enough money to file for bankruptcy.

Sulfur dioxide from the volcano has wiped out multiple small farms and nurseries in the nearby largely rural district of Kau. The gas, which creates volcanic smog when mixed with sunlight and air, threatens the viability of some flower and vegetable crops.

Roses, sunflowers, protea, lettuce, tomatoes and even medical marijuana are hurt by the smog.

Sulfur dioxide is not new on the Big Island, where Kilauea has been erupting continuously since 1983. But last March, the volcano began releasing two to four times more sulfur dioxide, and a second, simultaneous eruption began at the summit's Halemaumau crater.

Sulfur dioxide volumes have reached levels unseen since scientists began keeping data in 1979.

Claudia McCall's farm, which is tucked into a valley north of Pahala, has slashed production by 75 percent and lost $1 million since the volcanic smog — or vog — started enveloping her plants last spring.

The McCall Flower Farm now only plants limited varieties, like Peruvian lilies, that have withstood the vog. They've also started planting coffee — which seems to grow OK even amid vog — but those trees won't produce their first crop for three years.

The federal and state governments have offered farmers low-interest loans. But many aren't interested in taking on more debt, especially with the vog still blowing in.

Seaman said the federal Farm Service Agency last summer offered to lend him more than $65,000 if he built "vog-proof" greenhouses equipped with air filters. But Seaman said the funds wouldn't have covered all his equipment costs.

"I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I don't want to put good money after bad," Seaman said. "It didn't make sense."

Farms that purchased federal crop insurance before the disaster have received payments. Many farmers, however, didn't have policies. The federal government is allowing these farmers to retroactively buy insurance, but this program is new and won't come to fruition until late this year.

The state Legislature is considering several bills to help, including a resolution asking the federal government to give grants to vog-damaged farms.

That would come too late for those who have already had to abandon their farms, like protea farmers Frank and Jackie Zumwalt.

Frank Zumwalt has moved to Louisiana to work on a supply ship serving offshore oil rigs. His wife is attending culinary school in Alabama so she can become a cook on board one of the vessels.

They left behind a farm in Ocean View that once grew 3,000 protea plants.

"The vog came down and settled," said Jackie Zumwalt. "It was almost like a Stephen King movie, 'The Mist,' because you couldn't see, you could hardly see your driveway."

Their former neighbor, Connie Stanton, is deserting Hawaii for Alaska in March to reclaim her old job running a weather station.

Other farmers say they may have to give up, too.

"People have gone, they've just abandoned their farms," said Tony Bayaoa. "If I don't get help, our farm is gone."

Not all growers are suffering, however.

Some native plants, especially ohia trees, appear to have evolved to resist the effects of sulfur dioxide.

Zoe Thorne, who has a native plant nursery just east of Kilauea, has been inundated by heavy vog several times. One of her few nonnative plants, a gunnera, looks like someone sprinkled acid on its leaves.

But her ohia trees show off brightly red and yellow blossoms and host several loudly singing birds. Her mamane, a plant favored by the endangered palila bird, have a healthy green hue. Same with her koa, the tree that grows Hawaii's favorite wood.

"They seem to have evolved with it," Thorne said. "They've show no sign at all."

But not all native plants have these talents.

Kelvin Sewake, an extension agent with the University of Hawaii College of Tropical Agriculture, has documented cases of koa, naio, and uki — all native species — that have suffered heavy vog damage.

Alaska: Level of alert raised to yellow

2009-03-07T21:25:00.001-06:00

The Alaska Volcano Observatory raised the warning level for Okmok to yellow, or advisory, on Monday after a series of seismic bursts that lasted for six hours. The tremors repeated again Wednesday but have since subsided. AVO coordinating scientist Steve McNutt said these seismic signals could mean anything.

"Signals like this sometimes precede eruptions on the scale of hours to days, sometimes weeks or longer. And then sometimes the volcano just goes back to sleep," he said. "So you have to be cautious and assume that it may erupt and it could do so quickly, so that's the basis for our treating it with caution and changing the color code. On the other hand it could represent a new physical state of the volcano in which case it could do something different and then go back to sleep."

Okmok erupted very suddenly in July but that was unusual. Its current behavior is reminiscent of the tremors between 2003 and 2005. "It kind of turned on, turned off, turned on turned off. And we may be back to that activity now," McNutt said. But if Okmok erupts again, it is likely to be a small eruption.

Mount Cleveland is also marked yellow, but this is typical. It has small eruptions up to half a dozen times per year. McNutt explained that since there is no seismic network on the island to detect minor changes, it is safer to keep the Cleveland warning at yellow most of the time.

Indonesia: Volcanic eruption

2009-03-07T21:21:00.000-06:00

THE tallest volcano on Indonesia's Java island erupted on Friday, spewing smoke and ash high into the sky and coating a nearby town in black dust, an official said.

The 3,676-metre Mount Semeru burst into life shortly after midnight but officials said it posed no danger to people living in the area, 35 kilometres southeast of Lumajang.

'We recorded that it erupted after midnight on Friday but luckily we have had rains so the ash isn't causing serious respiration problems for the residents,' volcanologist Agus Budianto told AFP.

Winds had also helped to carry the harmful debris away from the most populated areas nearby, he said.

Mr Budianto said there had been no evacuation order but authorities were monitoring the eruption closely for signs of lethal heat clouds.

The Indonesian archipelago sits on the seismically active Pacific 'Ring of Fire' where continental plates collide, and is home to about 130 active volcanoes.

Bobby Jindal puts down the necessity of "volcano monitoring" in Alaska!

2009-03-07T21:15:00.001-06:00

In his official Republican response to President Barack Obama’s speech to the nation Tuesday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said repeatedly that "Americans can do anything!"

With one exception apparently. We don’t need to keep an eye on simmering volcanoes.

Jindal singled out "volcano monitoring" in Alaska as an unnecessary frill that Democrats stuck in the recently adopted stimulus package.

"Their legislation is larded with wasteful spending," Jindal said. "It includes ... $140 million for something called ’volcano monitoring.’ Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington D.C."

Jindal’s comments provoked an eruption of their own. Alaska politicians, liberal bloggers and some scientists began pointing out how useful it is to let people know when a volcano in their neighborhood is about to explode.

"Volcano monitoring is a matter of life and death in Alaska," Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, said in an open letter to Jindal.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, quickly agreed, noting in a press statement how "absolutely appropriate" it is to spend money on volcano monitoring. However, said Murkowski, Jindal raised "a legitimate question about funding volcano monitoring in legislation that’s supposed to create jobs for unemployed Americans."

Jindal appears to have exaggerated by tenfold the $140 million he said was destined for the nation’s volcano observatories.

Nearly all of that amount - included in the stimulus bill for funding U.S. Geological Survey projects - will go to other USGS functions nationwide, such as repairing facilities and mapping, said John Eichelberger, who heads the agency’s Volcano Hazards Program in Reston, Va.

Only about $14 million will be spent on "monitoring volcanoes," mostly in Alaska, he said.

The USGS also staffs volcano observatories in Hawaii and the Pacific Northwest, but most of the nation’s active volcanoes - and most of the yearly eruptions - occur in Alaska, said Eichelberger, who once worked at the Alaska Volcano Observatory while a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

"It was a strange thing for (Jindal) to pick up on," he said. "This is really very important work. We can see these eruptions coming, so it saves lives to be able to warn people."

Several online commentators, such as New York Times [NYT] columnist Paul Krugman, questioned why the governor of a state that depends so much on federally funded hurricane watching would criticize spending federal dollars to safeguard other Americans against volcano eruptions. "The intellectual incoherence is stunning," Krugman wrote.

Multiple requests for a response from Jindal himself via phone calls to the governor’s office in Baton Rouge were not returned Tuesday.

A request for a comment from Gov. Sarah Palin - also considered a future GOP presidential contender - wasn’t forthcoming either. But Palin press secretary Bill McAllister said: "Of course Alaskans want to know if a volcano is going to blow."

Begich said volcano monitoring also safeguards national economic interests, since Anchorage - bordered by four active Cook Inlet volcanoes - is one of the busiest cargo airports in the world.

"Any interruptions of that traffic by a volcanic eruption could be felt in Tokyo, New York or even Baton Rouge," Begich said.

The Web site "Live Science" noted that volcano monitoring by USGS scientists probably saved thousands of lives, including those of U.S. servicemen, during the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Phillipines.

Closer to home, the Alaska Volcano Observatory on Tuesday was watching Mount Redoubt, located 100 miles south of Anchorage, which has been rumbling for more than a month and is expected to blow.

Colombia: Galeras volcano erupts!

2009-02-28T22:09:00.001-06:00

Galeras volcano in southern Colombia erupted on Friday for the second time in less than a week, sending ash raining down but no causing no victims or damage, the Colombian Institute of Geology and Mines said.

A forceful eruption began at 7:05 am (1205 GMT), residents reported from the city of Pasto, at the foot of the volcano.

The regional alert system was raised to its highest level, the institute said in a statement.

The eruption was "accompanied by shock waves," generating vibrating effects and audible rumbles, the institute said.

Speaking on Caracol radio emergency official Luz Amanda Pulido reported ash was falling and that contingency evacuation plans were in place if the situation worsens.

It follows a similar eruption late Saturday at the volcano, which is located near the border with Ecuador. That eruption caused no casualties or damage, although emergency procedures began to evacuate 8,000 residents.

The 4,270-meter (14,009-foot) Galeras has stirred sporadically in recent years. It erupted in January 2008, causing no casualties, but a 1993 eruption claimed the lives of nine people.

Chaiten volcano erupts again!

2009-02-28T21:49:00.000-06:00

More than 150 people who had returned to a Chilean town destroyed by a volcanic eruption last year were evacuated again on Thursday as the volcano roared back to life, spewing ash high into the air.

The explosion apparently rocked the dome of the Chaiten volcano and sent volcanic material down the mountain's slope, threatening to block a river and trigger flooding, said Paula Narvaez, a presidential delegate to the area in southern Chile.

Experts who flew over the volcano reported "large emanation of gas" on Thursday and said the situation is risky for the nearby seaside town of Chaiten because rains could trigger avalanches.

"The experts were unanimous in considering that no one must remain in Chaiten," Chile's Emergency Bureau said in a communique.

Narvaez said that as many as 160 people were evacuated from the vicinity of the 2,700-foot (960-meter) volcano.

More than 4,000 people were initially evacuated after Chaiten erupted on May 2 for the first time in an estimated 9,000 years.

On Thursday, increased seismic activity was reported and ash fell 100 miles (160 kilometers) away in Futaleufu.

Some residents of Chaiten, six miles (10 kilometers) from the like-named volcano, have strongly resisted government efforts to relocate them to a new settlement following the devastating eruption last year.

Residents opposed to the move in recent weeks staged protests in the town's ruins, amid houses buried under ash and volcanic mudflows.

Narvaez said the situation on Thursday "was exactly the kind of danger we were talking about when we decided to relocate Chaiten."

The relocation site has yet to be determined.

Alaska: Some schools are preparing for eruption

2009-02-28T18:38:00.000-06:00

Some Alaskan schools are making preparations in advance of what scientists say is an "imminent" eruption from the 10,200-foot Redoubt Volcano, about 100 miles southwest of Anchorage.

Scientists from the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) set the observatory's alert level on a "watch" for a possible eruption after the mountain experienced tremors and elevated seismic activity, including a sharp increase in earthquakes underneath the mountain.

Geologists flew to Mount Redoubt to collect gas samples and look for signs of an eruption after a steam plume was again spotted Feb. 7, near a dome that formed after the last eruption in 1990.

Alaska's volcanoes are not like Hawaii's. "Most of them don't put out the red river of lava," said AVO's John Power. Instead, they typically explode and shoot ash 30,000 to 50,000 feet high--more than nine miles--into the jet stream.

The Anchorage School District's (ASD) web site features information about a possible eruption and encourages schools to prepare in advance. The web site says scientists predict that it would take at least two and a half hours for ash from an eruption to travel to the Anchorage area.

"Our response will depend on the timing and severity of the ashfall," said a district spokesperson.

ASD's Departments of Instruction, Maintenance, Transportation, Risk Management, Emergency Preparedness, and others have reviewed emergency plans and have plans for dealing with a variety of scenarios. The district will contact employees and parents with critical information and shelter-in-place, if necessary, in the event of a disruption during the school day.

District officials said that emergency information will be available on a specific television channel, on ASD's web site, through a telephone recording, and through major media.

Purchasing N95 dust masks, using eye goggles or other protection, and buying extra air and oil filters for vehicles will help citizens prepare for a possible ashfall. A wet handkerchief or piece of fabric can take the place of a dust mask. People, especially young children, the elderly, and those with respiratory conditions, are advised to stay indoors. Pets should be brought indoors as well.

The ash from an eruption can injure skin, eyes, and breathing passages.

"It's a very abrasive kind of rock fragment," Power said. "It's not the kind of ash that you find at the base of your wood stove." The particulate has jagged edges and has been used as an industrial abrasive and to polish metals.

It's also potentially deadly for anyone flying in a jet.

"Think of flying an airliner into a sandblaster," Power said.

The jet stream can carry ash for hundreds of miles. Ash from Kasatochi Volcano in the Aleutians last August blew all the way to Montana and threatened aircraft, Power said.

Kilauea volcanic eruption celebrates 26 years!

2009-02-28T15:49:00.001-06:00

The Kilauea Visitor Center Auditorium was full on Jan. 13, some people even sitting on the floor and standing up in the back.

They were all there, locals and tourist alike to watch "After Dark In The Park," a presentation by Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park on Kilauea's eruptions. The presenter, USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory geologist Tim Orr, spoke about the east rift zone's 26 years of eruptions and the surprise eruptive vent that opened in Halema'uma'u crater last year.

The east rift zone celebrated its 26th anniversary Jan. 3. It was an exciting and eruptive 26 years. Orr said Pu'u 'O'o vent covered 29,859 acres of land, destroying roughly 180 structures, mostly old abandoned homes in the Royal Garden Subdivision and Kalapana, and adding new land to Hawai'i Island.

Forty-four different activities originated from Pu'u 'O'o vent. Pu'u 'O'o is known for its high lava fountains, each fountain lasting about one day. These high fountains ranged in size, the largest being a little over 1,500 ft high, "Which is a little taller then the Empire State building," Orr said.

In 1986 the eruption shifted downwind away from Pu'u 'O'o, and Kupaianaha was born. Unlike Pu'u 'O'o, which was known for its high lava fountains, Kupaianaha was characterized by its continuous flow of lava. The flow that destroyed Kalapana in 1990 originated from Kupaianaha. On March 5, 2008, the flow reached the ocean, and that same tube system remains today. The location was named Waikupanaha.

The east rift zone flows show no signs of slowing down. According to Orr, the vents will probably continue doing what they have been doing.

During the presentation on Pu'u 'O'o and Kupaianaha, viewers were able to watch a video clip from a time lapse camera, of a period of over 9 hours, which occurred on Jan. 26, 2008. The camera showed lava breaking through the earth and flowing out.

Orr ended his presentation by thanking the past and present USG workers who have contributed to the research that led to his presentation.

To find out more information on the activities of the lava flow visit: http://www.usgs.gov.

To view the video clips played at the presentation visit: http://www.hvo.wr.usgs.gov.

Mount Redoubt steams up in Alaska

2009-02-28T14:23:00.001-06:00

Geologists on Saturday spotted expanded holes in the glacier that clings to the north side of Alaska's Mount Redoubt, and rivulets of water streaming down its side, as they closely monitored the volcano for a new eruption.

Scientists with the Alaska Volcano Observatory on Friday flew close to Drift Glacier and saw vigorous steaming emitted from a football field-size area on the north side of the mountain. By Saturday, they had confirmed the area was a fumarole, an opening in the earth that emits gases and steam, and that it had doubled in size overnight.

The area is at 7,100 feet, just below a dome that formed the last time Redoubt blew in 1990, said research geologist Kristi Wallace.

Observers also saw water streaming down Drift Glacier, indicating heat from magma is reaching higher elevations of the mountain.

"The glacier is sort of falling apart in the upper part," Wallace said.

The signs of heat add to concerns that an eruption is near, which could send an ash cloud about 100 miles northeast toward Anchorage, the state's largest city, or onto communities on the Kenai Peninsula, which are even closer to the mountain on the west side of Cook Inlet.

Particulate sent up in an eruption has jagged edges and can injure skin, eyes and breathing passages, especially in young children, the elderly and people with respiratory problems.

It can also foul engines. An eruption in December 1989 sent out an ash cloud 150 miles that flamed out the jet engines of a KLM flight carrying 231 passengers on its way to Anchorage. The jet dropped more than two miles before pilots were able to restart the engines and land safely.

The volcano observatory a week ago detected a sharp increase in earthquake activity below the volcano and upgraded its alert level to orange, one stage below red for a full eruption. The warning that an eruption was imminent prompted a rush on dust masks and car air filters in Anchorage.

Wallace flew Friday and observed other indications of warmth on the nearly 10,200-foot mountain. At a flat area on the 9,000-foot level, scientists photographed a "collapse feature," a circular hole where ice had melted. The feature had grown larger and become irregular in shape by Saturday, Wallace said.

"That tells us that there's some indication that a magma chamber is moving up into the volcanic edifice and heating up the rocks," Wallace said.

Scientists flying into or near the plume Saturday took samples of sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide, all magmatic gases, Wallace said.

Alaska volcanoes typically start with an explosion that can shoot ash 50,000 feet high and into the jet stream but there are warning signs because magma causes small earthquakes as it moves.

Geologist Jennifer Adleman said magma is a combination of three phases: liquid rock plus a gas and crystals than can form sort of a froth that works its way up the mountain.

"A lot of scientists refer to is as a crystalline mush," she said.

The hot liquid and the gas fracture rock as they create a path and force their way to the surface. The observatory has been recording quakes up to magnitude 2.1 but not at the frequency that preceded the 1989 and 1990 eruptions.

"We're looking for an increase of seismicity to match the precursor activity," Wallace said. "We haven't seen that yet."

The observatory is a joint program between the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Alaska Geophysical Institute and the state Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

If the mountain erupts, the observatory will immediately alert the Federal Aviation Administration to warn pilots, and then other emergency officials.

Military aircrafts are moved to McChord due to volcanic activity in Alaska

2009-02-28T14:21:00.000-06:00

U.S. Air Force aircraft and personnel are being relocated from Alaska to McChord Air Force Base near Tacoma as a precautionary measure due to heightened activity at Alaska's Mount Redoubt volcano.

The relocation, while temporary, is expected to last two to four weeks at a minimum, said Master Sgt. Dean J. Miller, a spokesman for the McChord base.

The aircraft and personnel are coming to McChord from Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, which is located about 100 miles from the Redoubt volcano.

The mountain began rumbling back to life several days ago, and activity has been increasing ever since. Gas and steam billowed from the mountain's flank over the weekend.

Alaska volcanoes typically start with an explosion that can shoot ash 50,000 feet high and into the jet stream. The ash can damage or foul aircraft engines in the vicinity.

The Redoubt volcano last erupted in 1989, when it sent out an ash cloud that flamed out the jet engines of a KLM flight carrying 231 passengers on its way to Anchorage. The jet dropped more than two miles before pilots were able to restart the engines and land safely.

The volcano observatory a week ago detected a sharp increase in earthquake activity below the volcano and upgraded its alert level to orange, one stage below red for a full eruption.

The Air Force sent three cargo aircraft from Elmendorf to McChord on Saturday and three more are expected Sunday night. Other aircraft may arrive within the next 24 to 48 hours.

McChord's own C-17 strategic airlift mission makes the base ideally suited to host the relocated aircraft and allows the Elmendorf airmen to continue to meet mission and training requirements, said Col. Jeffrey Stephenson, McChord's 62nd Airlift Wing commander.

"Our ability to quickly receive additional air power on short notice and continue to support the nation's worldwide strategic airlift requirements is a capability long-associated with McChord," Stephenson said.

"We've supported evacuations in the past, and we will gladly support our fellow airmen from Elmendorf as long as they need us."

If and when an eruption begins, it is expected to cause disruptions for civilian aircraft as well, officials said.

Japan and Russia: Two volcanic eruptions

2009-02-28T14:15:00.001-06:00

Two volcanoes in Japan and another in eastern Russia erupted overnight, spreading ash as far as the Philippines and Vietnam, the Japan Meteorological Agency said on its Web site.

Seven minor eruptions occurred at Mount Sakurajima on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu, throwing rocks up to 2 kilometers, the agency said. Eruptions at Mount Asama in central Japan and Karymsky Volcano on the Russian peninsula of Kamchatka were also reported. There were no reports of damage or injuries.

“I woke up after midnight to the sound and shake of the eruption,” Daisuke Tanaka, 24, a convenience-store attendant, who lives about 20 kilometers away from Asama, said by telephone today. “The sound was as if an airplane was taking off nearby and it continued for 30 minutes.”

The eruptions occurred in a region where four tectonic plates, the Eurasian, Philippine, North American and Pacific, meet, causing seismic activity.

Japan has 108 active volcanoes representing about 10 percent of the world’s total. Forty-three people died in 1991 after Mount Unzen erupted on the southern island of Kyushu, while 15,000 people were evacuated after Mount Usu erupted on the northern island of Hokkaido in 2000.

The 2,568 meter Asama, which last had a minor eruption in August last year, is one of the most active volcanoes in Japan. A major eruption in 1783 killed more than 1,000 people.

The meteorological agency raised its alert levels for both Asama and Sakurajima, prohibiting people from entering the area around the volcano.

To contact the reporters on this story: Takahiko Hyuga in Tokyo at thyuga@bloomberg.net; Stuart Biggs in Tokyo at sbiggs3@bloomberg.net.

Mount Asama is about to erupt!

2009-02-28T13:47:00.000-06:00

Japan's Meteorological Agency increased the alert level at Mount Asama volcano in central Japan, warning of an eruption within two days, an agency official said on Sunday.

The alert level was raised due to signs of increased seismic activity on Mount Asama, a 2,568 meter (8,425 foot) peak 140 km (90 miles) northwest of Tokyo, the official said.

"There are prospects for an eruption that could throw volcanic rocks to a distance of around 4 kilometres," Sadayuki Kitagawa, senior coordinator for volcanic affairs at Japan's Meteorological Agency, told Reuters by telephone.

He said the type of seismic activity detected on the mountain pointed to the possibility of an eruption within a few hours to around two days.

Mount Asama, one of Japan's more active volcanoes, had its biggest eruption in 21 years on September 1 2004, spewing hot rock and raining ash on areas as far as 200 km (125 miles) away. That eruption, however, did not cause any major damage.

The warning level for a Mount Asama eruption was raised one notch to level three on a scale of five, in which five is the highest level of alert, Kitagawa said.

A level three alert covers non-residential areas near the crater of the volcano and warns people not to approach the volcano. It was the first such alert for Mount Asama since the Meteorological Agency adopted the current volcanic warning levels in December 2007, Kitagawa said.

Mount Asama is known for a huge eruption in 1783 that caused widespread damage and killed around 1,500 people.

(Reporting by Masayuki Kitano; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

Colombian volcano is expected to erupt, prompting evacuation!

2009-01-31T16:09:00.000-06:00

Colombian emergency officials have begun evacuating 800 families from an area at high risk from the expected eruption of a volcano that killed at least six people in November.

Colombians make their way across a landslide in November after the Nevado del Huila volcano erupted.

The Nevado del Huila volcano is on orange alert, meaning an eruption is probable within days or weeks, the Colombian Institute of Geology and Mining said last week.

An eruption would cause an avalanche down the Paez and Simbola rivers, officials said. The town under evacuation, Belalcazar, sits on the bank of the Paez River about a half-mile (less than a kilometer) from the junction with the Simbola River. It was the worst-hit area in November's eruption.

The volcano's crater holds 52 million cubic meters (1.8 billion cubic feet) of lava, said Colombia's Caracol Radio. That's the equivalent of 13.8 billion gallons.

The Colombian national emergency agency said Monday it is ready to evacuate thousands of residents if the volcano's condition turns to red, which means an eruption is imminent or ongoing.

The snow-capped Huila, the highest active volcano in Colombia, last erupted on November 20. At least six people, including four children, died then.

Gas and hot ash caused snow on the mountain peak to melt, sending mud, rocks and floodwater rushing down the Paez and destroying at least 20 homes and washing out five bridges, the presidential office said at the time.

Much of the sparsely populated region about 155 miles (250 kilometers) southwest of Bogota is a reservation for Nasa indigenous communities. All six fatalities were native Indians, the government said. The youngest victim was a year old.

The Huila volcano, which has a summit of 17,598 feet (5,364 meters), has erupted four times. The first documented eruption occurred in the 1500s, then it stood silent for more than 400 years, according to the Web site volcanolive.com.

Colombian emergency officials said Monday they are asking the 800 families where they want to be moved to, Caracol Radio said.

Scientists with the Colombian Institute of Geology and Mining, commonly known as Ingeominas, said they did not detect any major action inside the volcano Monday, Caracol reported.

Ingeominas and the National System for Emergencies are monitoring the volcano around the clock and have acquired new equipment, including additional telecommunication gear and an infrared camera to monitor Huila's temperature.

Officials also plan to install a microphone on Huila to detect any new rumblings from inside the volcano, Caracol said.

Officials already are monitoring the volcano with four stations that detect seismological activity, a video camera, a communications network and a system that measures mudflow, Caracol said.

Mount Redoubt is under observation!

2009-01-31T13:34:00.001-06:00

It's been nearly 20 years since Alaska's Mount Redoubt erupted, but that time of tranquility might end.

Recent seismic activity could be a prelude to an eruption, "perhaps within hours to days," said geologists from the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

The 10,197-foot peak sits about 50 miles west of Kenai and 100 miles southwest of Anchorage. It last erupted during a five-month stretch beginning December 1989.

Recent activity began around 1 a.m. Sunday, then it eased about five hours later.

It was still well above normal "background" tremor levels, said Dave Schneider, a volcanologist from the observatory.

An observatory crew flew over Redoubt, and it ruled there had been no eruption.

"There was steaming through pre-existing holes, but there were no new holes. ... and there was no ash on the snow cover," he said.

But during the flyover, crew members smelled sulfur, so observatory staff will be monitoring activity and satellite images that identify temperature changes round the clock, Schneider said.

Observers will also look to weather radar scanners near the Kenai airport for help. Those scanners send data in six-minute intervals.

These scanners will be able to detect an ash plume should one appear, Schneider said.

Twenty years ago, an eruption forced mud flows from Redoubt into the Drift River drainage. The flows also caused partial flooding of the Drift River Oil Terminal facility.

Additionally, the ash plume disrupted international air traffic and a thin ash layer coated Anchorage and surrounding communities.

Sunday's volcanic activity came on the heels of a magnitude 5.7 earthquake at the mouth of Cook Inlet.

However, Schneider said that does not necessarily mean the earthquake stirred the volcanic activity. With the two events being more than 100 miles apart, it's even more unlikely, he said.

Mount Etna erupted!

2009-01-31T13:31:00.000-06:00

One of the most active volcanoes in the world, the Etna, is throwing away today ashes and lava that descend the western face towards the Bove Valley.

The eruption, initiated last May, is visible from a long distance, underlined the National Institute for Geophysics and Volcanology of Catania that is responsible for the monitoring of the crater formed almost in the top of the Italian giant.

According to the Institution, the phenomenon does not represents any danger for the population, however is permanently watched due to its constant internal movements.

The Etna, located in the southern Italian island of Sicily, has 3322 meters high and it’s considered as the first and biggest active volcano in Europe. It’s first eruption occurred 1500 years ago, before Christ (BC)

According to historical references, in year 122 BC took place a great activity that destroyed the Catania region.

Evacuation has been prompted due to possible volcanic eruption

2009-01-24T14:18:00.000-06:00

A possible new eruption of the Nevado del Huila volcano forced authorities to evacuate villages and settlements at risk of being flooded in case of an eruption.

The mudslide following an eruption of the volcano in November last year killed several people and destroyed a large part of Belalcázar, a town on the banks of the Rio Paéz.

About 4,000 people living near the river are now evacuated.

Disaster authorities are monitoring the volcano and will evaluate how long the people will be forced to stay away from their homes.

Is Kilauea's eruption coming to an end?

2009-01-17T20:42:00.000-06:00

Is Kilauea’s summit eruption pau—coming to an end—as the New Year begins? This question is currently under discussion at the U.S. Geological Survey Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO). According to Jim Kauahikaua, HVO Scientist-in-Charge, several lines of evidence confirm a decrease in activity at the vent in Halema‘uma‘u Crater. In early December, the gas plume emitted from Halema‘uma‘u became wispy and translucent, a marked change from the opaque white or brown plumes that billowed from the vent in previous months.

“The recent rains changed the plume’s appearance, so it looks a bit denser now,” said Kauahikaua. Using an infrared camera that can “see” through the gas plume, HVO geologists noted on December 31 that a previously open conduit in the Halema‘uma‘u vent was filled with rubble, or rocky debris from collapse of the conduit walls. The camera also shows that vent temperatures are greatly diminished, perhaps to pre-eruption temperatures. Sulfur dioxide emission rates have dropped to their lowest values since late 2007.

Recent heavy rain converted small amounts of the sulfur dioxide (SO2) to hydrogen sulfide (H2S), so nearby residents may have noticed a slight rotten egg smell in the air last week. " We’ve also seen changes in the tephra, or volcanic rock fragments, ejected from the summit vent during the past month," said Kauahikaua. "On December 5, more than half the tephra erupted was derived from molten lava. Two weeks later, the amount of tephra was much smaller and consisted almost entirely of rock dust derived from older, pre-eruption rocks in the vent walls."

Kauahikaua added, "If an eruption is defined as a volcanic event that deposits solid material on the ground surface, then the Halema‘uma‘u eruption stopped in mid-December." He cautions, however, that the summit vent remains in a state of unrest. Sulfur dioxide emissions, measured at 770 tonnes per day on January 7, are still elevated compared to pre-2008 background levels. Seismic tremor beneath Kilauea’s summit also remains elevated.

"The eruption may have paused, rather than ended," Kauahikaua concluded. "We can’t rule out the possibility that the eruption will resume, so HVO scientists continue to carefully monitor the summit vent in Halema‘uma‘u Crater."

Daily updates for the summit and east rift eruptions are posted on the HVO Web site at http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov.

Montserrat's Soufrière Hills erupts causing villagers to flee the premises

2009-01-17T20:00:00.001-06:00

There has been an increase in volcanic activity at Montserrat’s Soufriere Hills, with ash being thrown more than 12 kilometers high and scattered throughout the entire island, forcing at least 70 residents to remove to other locations.

Soufriere Hills VolcanoTwo explosions occurred on Saturday and, according to reports, the instrument that usually monitors the volcano did not give warning of the eruptions. The Antigua Sun reported that Dr Nico Fournier of the Volcano Observatory said that within the next few days he would be able to ascertain if there would be further eruption.

During the past 14 years the volcano has erupted several times, forcing residents to evacuate their homes and entire towns and migrate to the United Kingdom, Antigua, the British Virgin Islands, and other areas. The first eruption was in July 1995 and two years later there was a big explosion, which buried the capital Plymouth and claimed the lives of 19 people.

A large number of Montserrat nationals went to the United Kingdom where they were given full residency and they became British citizens in 2002. Some went to nearby Antigua and others removed to the British Virgin Islands and other Caribbean islands.

Is there a link between volcanic eruptions and the tropical climate cooling down?

2009-01-17T19:54:00.001-06:00

Big volcanic eruptions cooled the tropics over the past 450 years, an effect masked by rising global temperatures, says a new study.Scientists already agree that large eruptions have lowered temperatures at higher latitudes in recent centuries, because volcanic particles reflect sunlight back into space.

For instance, 1816, the year following the massive Tambora eruption in Indonesia, became known as 'The Year Without a Summer', after low temperatures caused crop failures in northern Europe and eastern North America.More extensive evidence comes in part from tree rings, which tend to grow thinner in years when temperatures go down.

This is one of the first such studies to show how the tropics have responded, said co-author Rosanne D'Arrigo, scientist at the Tree Ring Lab at Columbia University.'This is significant because it gives us more information about how tropical climate responds to forces that alter the effects solar radiation,' said D'Arrigo.

The other co-authors were Rob Wilson of Lamont and the University of St. Andrews, Scotland and Alexander Tudhope of University of Edinburgh.Along with tree rings, the researchers analysed ice cores from alpine glaciers, and corals, taken from a wide area of the tropics.When the earth cools, not only do trees tend to grow less, but isotopes of oxygen in corals and glacial ice may shift.

All showed that low-latitude temperatures declined for several years after major tropical eruptions.The samples, spanning 1546 to 1998, were taken from Nepal down through Indonesia and across the Indian and Pacific oceans; the ice cores came from the Peruvian Andes.

The researchers used materials they collected themselves, as well as samples from the archives of other scientists.The data show that the most sustained cooling followed two events: an 1809 eruption that probably took place in the tropics, but whose exact location remains unknown; and the 1815 Tambora eruption, one of the most powerful recorded in human history, according to a Columbia university release.

'Particularly warm decades may have partially overridden the cooling effect of some volcanic events,' said D'Arrigo. 'This study provides some of the first comprehensive information about how the tropical climate system responded to volcanism prior to the instrumental period,' she concluded.The findings were published in the current issue of Nature Geoscience.

Russian volcano erupts while Yellowstone volcano worries experts

2009-01-01T17:23:00.001-06:00

It would be an American disaster scenario but Yellowstone National Park is long overdue for a monster eruption that could leave as much as half the U.S. under a blanket of ash. In Russia, as the new year closes in, the Koryakski volcano to the far east of Russia has started to erupt emitting ash which could threaten local populations.

Volcano Eruption Concerns in Yellowstone and Russia While the Yellowstone volcano eruption is not immanent, in Russia thee is concerns. The BBC has video here and reports, "Russia's Koryakski volcano on the eastern Kamchatka Peninsula has erupted sending ash 6,000 metres (20,000 feet) into the air, according to the local geophysics service."

***The report notes that in the past 24 hours, about 170 tremors have been registered near the volcano. The last major eruption occurred 3,500 years ago. There are more than 150 volcanoes on the peninsula, 29 of them active. In the US, what would happen if the volcano erupted in Yellowstone? According to gene Byrd, "Half the country could be covered in ash up to 3 feet deep. Should you be worried? Consider this, "Yellowstone seems to blow its top about every 600,000 years."

By Tim Morgan

Chaiten Volcano is still unsafe for villagers

2008-12-30T22:00:00.001-06:00

Chile's government said on Friday the area surrounding the Chaiten Volcano, which erupted in May for the first time in thousands of years, was still not safe and that a decision regarding the future of the town of Chaiten would be made in coming days.The Volcano, only six miles (10 km) from the town, started spewing ash, gas and molten rock on May 2, forcing the evacuation of about 7,000 residents.

A cloud of debris that soared as high as 20 miles (32 km) into the air was kept aloft by the pressure of constant eruptions for weeks, and even covered towns in neighboring Argentina with volcanic ash."We received the latest report from the Universidad Catolica ... and the only thing I can tell you is that the volcano is exactly as dangerous as it was before," Interior Minister Edmundo Perez-Yoma told reporters.

"We were hoping we might have better news, but unfortunately we don't."The government has not dismissed the possibility of relocating the small town and making the whole area a no-go zone for years to come, but many locals have said they want to return to their homes in Chaiten.

"The volcano is still active," Perez-Yoma said. "Given the latest definitive information, we will be making a decision in the coming days."Chile has the second largest and most active chain of volcanoes in the world after Indonesia.About 90 percent of the town was flooded in May as volcanic ash caused nearby rivers to breach their banks.

Kilauea volcano takes a 3 days break!

2008-12-30T21:55:00.000-06:00

The Kilauea volcano on the big island of Hawaii took a three-day break this week from its 26-year eruption.

Scientists said that lava stopped flowing at what is known as the Thanksgiving Eve Breakout on Monday and started up again on Christmas Eve, the Honolulu Advertiser reported Friday.

Jim Kauahikaua, head of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory of the U.S. Geological Survey, said that interruptions have become more common, although they are usually shorter than three days, and that scientists have not determined what causes them. Kilauea continued to emit sulfur gas through two vents and some tephra through one of the vents.

Kauahikaua said that the pauses in lava flow are sometimes -- but not always -- associated with inflation-deflation events when the summit of the volcano reduces in size and then reinflates.
"We've looked but we don't understand the relationship," he said.

Kilauea, one of five shield volcanos on the island of Hawaii, began its current eruption in January 1983. The location of the lava flow shifted a year ago to the Thanksgiving Eve Breakout.

The eruption has added almost 600 acres to the largest of the Hawaiian islands while burying 191 structures and a nine-mile section of highway.

Do volcanoes affect the Tropics temperature?

2008-12-23T16:12:00.001-06:00

The Reventador Volcano erupted in November 2008 in Reventador, some 90 kilometres northeast of Quito, Ecuador. Volcanic eruptions have periodically cooled the tropics over at least the last 450 years by spewing out particles that girdle the world at high altitude and reflect sunlight, according to a study released Sunday. Volcanic eruptions have periodically cooled the tropics over at least the last 450 years by spewing out particles that girdle the world at high altitude and reflect sunlight, according to a study released Sunday.

The Reventador Volcano erupted in November 2008 in Reventador, some 90 km northeast of Quito, Ecuador. Volcanic eruptions have periodically cooled the tropics over at least the last 450 years by spewing out particles that girdle the world at high altitude and reflect sunlight, according to a study released Sunday. (AFP/File)The research adds a chunk of regional evidence to earlier work that found major eruptions --such as Krakatoa, Indonesia in 1883 and Huaynaputina, Peru in 1600 --contribute to cooling on a worldwide scale.

A trio of scientists led by Rosanne D'Arrigo of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, looked at ocean temperatures in a belt extending from 30 degrees south across the equator to 30 degrees north. They compiled temperature records reaching back nearly half a millennium from three sources: ice cores, tree rings and coral reefs. They found the longest sustained period of cooling of sea surfaces --to a depth of one metre (3.25 feet) --occurred in the early 1800s following the eruption of Mount Tambora on the Indonesia island of Sumbawa.

Tambora blew its top in 1815 and was the most powerful eruption in recorded history, ejecting about 50 cubic kilometres (12 cubic miles) of magma, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS). However, links between volcanic activity and cooler ocean surfaces weakened in the 20th century, apparently as a result of global warming from the burning of fossil fuels, the researchers say.

Another study, also published online in the journal Nature Geoscience, points to a previously unrecognised potential driver of climate change. Intensive, chemical-laden agriculture could trigger the release of carbon dioxide (CO2) from river systems, Henry Wilson and Marguerite Xenopoulos of Trent University in Ontario Canada argue. The researchers examined organic, meaning carbon-bearing, matter that had dissolved in 34 rivers in Ontario. Some of the rivers were pristine and others were heavily polluted by runoff from agricultural chemicals such as fertilisers, insecticides and herbicides.

Pollution from these chemicals meant the organic material was likelier to release its carbon into the atmosphere, the study found. This factor should be taken into account by climate modelers, the study suggested.

Indonesia: Mud volcano drives villagers away from their homes

2008-12-23T15:46:00.001-06:00

Her children insist, so every week or two Lilik Kamina takes them back to their abandoned village to look at the mud.

“Hey, Mom, there’s our house, there’s the mango tree,” she said they shout. But there is nothing to see, only an ocean of mud that has buried this village and a dozen more over the past two-and-a-half years.

The mud erupted here during exploratory drilling for natural gas, and it has grown to be one of the largest mud volcanoes ever to have affected a populated area. Unlike other disasters that torment Indonesia — earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis — this one continues with no end in sight, and experts say the flow of mud could go on for many years or decades.

The steaming mud keeps bubbling up, spreading across the countryside, driving people from their homes, burying fields and factories. It has forced the relocation of roads, bridges, a railway line and a major gas pipeline.

As the earth disgorges the mud and the lake of mud grows, the land is sinking by as much as 40 feet a year and could subside to depths of more than 460 feet just one hour’s drive from Indonesia’s second city, Surabaya, according to Richard Davies, a geologist at Durham University in Britain who is an expert on mud volcanoes.

Siti Maimunah, an environmental advocate, said people who lived nearby had begun getting sick, with about 46,000 visiting clinics with respiratory problems since the mud eruption.
Ms. Siti, who is national coordinator for the Mining Advocacy Network of Indonesia, said the gas that emerged with the mud was toxic and possibly carcinogenic. “We worry that in the next 5 to 10 years people will face a second disaster with health problems,” she said.

Attempts to stem the flow have failed.

These have included a scheme to drop hundreds of giant concrete balls into the mouth of the eruption; the concrete balls simply disappeared without effect. A project to divert some of the mud into the nearby Porong River has raised fears that the buildup of silt on the riverbed could cause severe flooding, possibly in Surabaya itself.

The disaster has become an embarrassment to President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who faces a new election next year, with groups of displaced people demonstrating in the distant capital, Jakarta.

The drilling company that critics say caused the disaster, Lapindo Brantas, is indirectly owned by the family of one of Indonesia’s richest and most influential men, Aburizal Bakrie, who is a major financial backer of President Yudhoyono and serves in his cabinet as coordinating minister for the people’s welfare.

The victims say compensation has been slow, with only a portion of promised funds delivered to them. Sixty-thousand people have fled their homes and many, like Ms. Lilik, now live in nearby shelters and in a marketplace.

This is a particularly forlorn class of displaced people who mostly fend for themselves because, as victims of what is being called a man-made disaster, they receive little assistance from the government or from international aid agencies.

“So we live without hope,” said Ali Mursjid, 25, who was in college studying to be a teacher before the mud volcano made him destitute. “Nobody is willing to help us.”

His village, Besuki, was only partly buried in mud, and it is now a ghost town of empty houses and hard, cracked mud where children fly kites and shout to hear their voices echo.

The steaming mud erupted from the ground on May 29, 2006, as Lapindo Brantas was drilling near the industrial district of Sidoarjo. Its tunnel pierced a pressurized aquifer 9,000 feet underground.
Experts on mud volcanoes say the drilling and inadequate safeguards in the borehole set off the eruption of water, gas and mud that continues to flow, at about 100,000 cubic meters a day.

Lapindo says that it was itself a victim, blaming vibrations from a major earthquake that struck two days earlier with an epicenter 186 miles away.

After listening to new evidence about the eruption, 74 petroleum geologists attending an October conference in Cape Town concluded that the drilling had been the cause.

“There is no question, the pressures in the well went way beyond what it could tolerate — and it triggered the mud volcano,” said Susila Lusiaga, a drilling engineer who was part of the Indonesian investigation team, according to a report on the conference by Durham University.

The debate over responsibility has severely limited the payments, said Elfian Effendi, executive director of Greenomics Indonesia, an environmental advocacy group.

After paying out 20 percent of a promised compensation package, Lapindo agreed this month to begin monthly payments equal to $2,500 to 8,000 families it said were eligible. But as part of the Bakrie family holdings, Lapindo has been severely affected by the current economic downturn and some experts question whether the full amount will ever be paid.

Since the first eruption in May 2006, there have been more than 90 others, most of them small but some explosive, said Jim Schiller, a political scientist at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, who has published a study of the disaster.

He described what he called the horror-movie progress of the mud, which continues to burst from the ground at unexpected times and places. “I’ve got pictures of them popping up in people’s living rooms,” he said.

The village of Renokenongo was buried during the biggest of these eruptions, in November 2007, when the weight of sinking earth burst a major natural-gas pipeline, killing 13 workers and sending a fireball into the sky.

Ms. Lilik, 30, who teaches kindergarten, said the visits to the levee by her former village calm her children, Icha Noviyanti, 11, and Fiqhi Izzudin, 5.

“People say it’s not a good idea to take the children there, but I think the opposite,” she said. “I think it’s very important for them to see their home and express their anger. They throw rocks at the mud and shout, ‘Lapindo!’ ”

A CT Scan for a volcano?

2008-12-23T15:34:00.000-06:00

On the ground and in the water, an international team of researchers has been collecting imaging data on the Soufriere Hills Volcano in Montserrat to understand the internal structure of the volcano and how and when it erupts."Using land-based measurement, we can see that over the time periods when the magma is erupting, the ground surface deflates into a bowl of subsidence and when the magma is sealed underground, the ground surface inflates like a balloon," says Barry Voight, professor emeritus of geosciences, Penn State.

"The interesting thing is that much more magma is erupting than appears represented by the subsiding bowl." Voight suggests a simple model to explain this discrepancy seen through the various eruptive phases and pauses of the volcano.In 1995, Soufriere Hills volcano began the current series of eruptions and pauses, with each episode lasting from one to three years.

The November 1995 event lasted until March 1998, during which time a thick dome of sticky andesite lava -- a volcanic rock -- grew continuously within the crater, punctuated by occasional and lethal explosions.

From March 1998 until November 1999, there was a pause in above-ground volcanic activity and the lava dome collapsed from its own weight and inactivity. Beginning in December 1999, the second eruptive episode continued until mid-July 2003 followed by a pause until October 2005. The third episode began then and ended in April 2007, followed by a pause, which still continues -- although, according to Voight, "a series of explosions started just a few days ago (early December) and this might mark the onset of the next eruptive period. We will need to wait and see if continuous lava extrusion follows."

The measurements taken during the on-going CALIPSO project, the ground-based phase of this study, uses Global Positioning Systems and strain meters to measure the exact up-and-down and sideways movements of numerous points over the volcano island. However, the volume changes represented by those measurements did not match measured volumes of the actual lava flows during the various eruption episodes, raising an intriguing puzzle.

The SEA CALIPSO project, involving a research consortium directed by Voight and S. Sparks, professor, earth sciences, University of Bristol, UK, used seismic waves caused by underwater air gun explosions at sea to map inside and under the volcano island in the same way as images inside the human body are revealed by a hospital CAT scan."In SEA-CALIPSO, we are using a variety of research tools to image the internal structure of the Earth's crust under the volcano island," says Voight.

"Our knowledge of the deeper structure under any of the Caribbean Islands is very limited and the internal structure of an active volcano is one of the most puzzling questions in the Earth sciences. It is nearly impossible to get direct measurements inside the volcano, so we rely largely on remote sensing methods."The researchers used seismic wave arrivals at over 200 land and sea floor seismometers to give CAT-scan like images of structure to about 5 miles deep.

They were also able to map how the seismic energy bounces off key reflecting layers near the crust-mantle boundary, around 20 miles down. The basalt at those depths forms horizontal layers that partly crystallize and generate residual melts enriched in silica, water and sulfur. These melts rise in pulses to shallower levels, where they define magma chambers of andesite composition – the lava now erupting on Montserrat.

The researchers are able to image the location of these chambers by their pressure centers, which are approximately 6 miles deep and defined by continuously measured GPS surface stations. Reporting in three sessions beginning today (Dec. 19), at the American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco, CALIPSO researchers discussed many aspects of the project. Voight's model of the Soufriere Hills Volcano accounts for the volume mismatch in erupted magma and ground movement by suggesting an elongated magma chamber beginning below 3 miles and centered about 6 miles beneath the mountain.

This chamber fills with magma, but the magma already in the chamber is rich in water, carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide gases, making it very compressible. As the chamber fills, part of the new magma pushes against the chamber walls, elevating the island surface, as detected by GPS; but most of the magma fits into the existing space by squeezing the bubbly resident magma. When the volcano erupts, the magma stuffed into the chamber decompresses and the amount of magma erupted is greater than the amount implied by ground subsidence.

"The magma volume in Montserrat eruptions is much larger than anyone would estimate from the surface deformation, because of the elastic storage of magma in what is effectively a huge magma sponge," says Voight. "Magma is continually fed into the chamber from below at a rate of about two cubic meters per second -- about the volume of a large refrigerator every second."

In the long term, the magma released in the eruptive periods is approximately balanced by the accumulated input during the eruptive episode and the preceding inflation. There is no evident depletion of the chamber, so the eruption could be long lasting.

The CALIPSO and SEA-CALIPSO projects involved a multinational consortium including Penn State, University of Arkansas, Carnegie Institution of Washington, Cornell University, Duke University, University of Auckland (N.Z.), Arizona State University, Bristol University (UK), National Oceanographic Centre (UK), Montserrat Volcano Observatory and Seismic Research Unit, Trinidad.

Researchers on this project include Voight, Sparks, Charles Ammon, Derek Elsworth, Cristina Widiwijayanti, Dannie Hidayat, Roozbeh Foroozan, Victoria Miller, all of Penn State; Glen Mattioli, University of Arkansas; T. Minshull and Michele Paulatto, National Oceanography Centre, and E. Shalev and K. Kenedi, Auckland; Selwyn Sacks, Alan Linde, CIW; and Larry Brown, Cornell.

The National Science Foundation, Natural Environmental Research Council, UK, British Geological Survey and Discovery Channel supported this work.

First human contact with magma

2008-12-23T15:24:00.001-06:00

A drilling crew has accidentally become the first humans known to have drilled into magma, which is the melted form of rock that sometimes erupts to the surface as lava.

According to a report in National Geographic News, the drilling crew cracked through rock layers deep beneath Hawaii and touched magma in its natural environment.

The find was made 1.5 miles (2.5 kilometers) underground during exploratory drilling for geothermal energy.

The crew hit something unusual during routine operations at the Puna Geothermal Venture, owned by Ormat Technologies, Inc., of Reno, Nevada.

When the workers tried to resume drilling, they discovered that magma had risen about 25 feet (8 meters) up the pipe they”d inserted.

The rock solidified into a clear glassy substance, apparently because it chilled quickly after hitting groundwater.

“This is an unprecedented discovery,” said Bruce Marsh, a volcanologist from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, who will be studying the find. ”Normally, volcanologists have to do “postmortem studies” of long-solidified magmas or study active lava during volcanic eruptions,” he said.

But this time, they”d found magma in its natural environment, something Marsh described as nearly as exciting as a paleontologist finding a dinosaur frolicking on a remote island.

Scientists had long known that magma chambers must lie in the vicinity of the drill site.

The drilling was being conducted for an existing geothermal power plant built to harvest heat from the world’’s most active volcanic zone, Kilauea volcano, which has been spewing lava continuously since 1983.

According to Don Thomas, a geochemist from the University of Hawaii’’s Center of the Study of Active Volcanoes, it was just a matter of time until some drilling operation there struck hot magma.
In addition, researchers found that the magma is made of dacite, a type of rock that’’s a precursor to granite, rather than the basalt that forms most of Hawaii.

Volcanologist Marsh is excited by the prospects for further study.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “We don”t know where it’’s going to lead, but it’’s a golden opportunity,” he added.

It might even be possible to do experiments inside the magma.

“This could be the first magma observatory in the Earth,” Marsh said. “This is a singular event of first contact with inner Earth, where magma lives,” he added.

With an estimated temperature of 1,050 degrees Celsius, the magma is also valuable as a high-quality heat source for geothermal energy production.

Alaska: Volcanic activity keeps observatory busy

2008-12-21T22:20:00.000-06:00

Scientists from Alaska Volcano Observatory and the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks will share details of their research on North Pacific volcanoes, highlighting some of the recent volcanic eruptions in Alaska, at a variety of presentations at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in San Francisco this week.

Three Alaska volcanoes erupted in midsummer 2008. Cleveland, Okmok and Kasatochi volcanoes, all located in Alaska’s Aleutian Chain, made for a hectic 20th anniversary for the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

Geophysical Institute director Roger Smith will discuss the history and achievements of the Alaska Volcano Observatory on Thursday. Smith’s talk will cover the observatory’s first test, which occurred with the 1989 eruption of Redoubt Volcano. The eruption spewed ash to a height of 45,000 feet, jeopardizing a Boeing 747 aircraft that was in range and covering Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula with ash.

Jessica Larsen, a research assistant professor with the Geophysical Institute and the UAF College of Natural Science and Mathematics, will talk on the eruption of Okmok Volcano, located near Dutch Harbor, Alaska. Okmok erupted explosively July 12, 2008 considerably changing the surrounding landscape. Larsen will share images from her pre- and post-eruption visits to Okmok during her presentation on Friday.

Smith and Larsen are just two of many presenters from the University of Alaska Fairbanks who will focus on the advances of the Alaska Volcano Observatory and the 2008 eruptions of Cleveland, Okmok and Kasatochi volcanoes. Other talks and poster sessions will focus on AVO instrumentation, volcano seismology, volcanic infrasound, computer simulations of volcanic ash, and more.

The Alaska Volcano Observatory is a joint program between the Geophysical Institute at UAF, the United States Geological Survey, and the State of Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.

What is the link between champagne and volcanoes?

2008-12-14T14:05:00.000-06:00

Earthquakes can set off volcanoes by shaking up molten rock like champagne in a bottle until they explode, a study suggests. The research shows that volcanoes erupt up to four times more often after a large earthquake than they would without the seismic agitation.

The effects of an earthquake can be felt hundreds of miles from the epicentre and are powerful enough to wake dormant volcanoes. However, it can take so long for a surge of molten rock to build up enough pressure to cause an eruption that several months can elapse between the trigger and the volcanic explosion.

The link between volcanoes and earthquakes has long been suspected but the new research has provided the first statistical evidence. Researchers at the University of Oxford identified the champagne effect after analysing records of volcanoes and earthquakes in southern Chile, the region where Charles Darwin first speculated on the likely link in 1835.

The research team found that the pattern of eruptions over the past 150 years showed a noticeable increase for a year after large earthquakes.

The volcano Tupungatito erupted within a year of both the 1906 and 1960 earthquakes, as did Calbuco and Villarrica. Osorno and Puntiagudo both erupted soon after Chile’s 1837 earthquake.
“The most unexpected part of this discovery was the considerable distance from the earthquake rupture where these eruptions took place, and the length of time for which we saw increased volcanic activity,” said Sebastian Watt, one of the researchers.

This suggests that seismic waves, radiating from the earthquake rupture, may trigger an eruption by stirring or shaking the molten rock beneath volcanoes.

“The disturbances that result from this lead to eruption but, because of the time it takes for pressure to build up inside a volcano and for magma to move towards the surface, an eruption may not occur until some months after the earthquake.”

There was a particularly strong effect in the wake of the great Chilean earthquake of 1960, the largest ever recorded with a magnitude of 9.5 on the Richter scale. The estimated death toll varies from 1,655 to 5,700, many of whom died because the quake prompted tsunamis in several countries.

Another of the earthquakes shown to have been followed by a succession of at least six volcanoes was that of 1906. In an average year just one volcano would have been expected.

"This work is important because it shows that the risk of volcanic eruption increases dramatically following large earthquakes in parts of the world, such as Chile, affected by these phenomena.
“Hopefully, our findings could help governments and aid agencies to manage volcanic hazards by showing the need for increased awareness of volcanic activity after large earthquakes.”

A report of the findings is to be published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

The deadliest volcanic eruptions!

2008-12-14T13:59:00.000-06:00

Volcanic eruptions are one of the deadliest natural hazards on Earth and can happen with little or no warning. Some of the greatest death tolls in modern human times have occurred as a result of a volcanic eruption. The types of volcanic hazards that are responsible for these deaths range from hazards directly associated to the eruption - such as pyroclastic flows - to hazards indirectly associated to the eruption - such as starvation.

According to an article written by J.-C. Tanguy and others titled, "Victims from volcanic eruptions: a revised database,' and published in the Bulletin of Volcanology and Geothermal Research in 1998, the five deadliest volcanic eruptions and the number of people who were killed as a result are:

Tambora, Indonesia (1815) ~ 60,000

Krakatau, Indonesia (1883) ~ 36,600

Mont Pelee, Martinique (1902) ~ 29,000

Nevado del Ruiz, Columbia (1985) ~ 23,000

Unzen, Japan (1792) ~ 15,000

Combined, these five deadly volcanic eruptions killed approximately 163,600 people and caused worldwide devastation.

The Main Causes of Death from the Volcanic Eruptions

Although each of these eruptions was powerful enough to cause pyroclastic flows, which is one of the deadliest hazards associated with volcanic activity, the main causes of death are, in some cases, surprising. The 1792 volcanic eruption of Unzen Volcano, Japan, did produce pyroclastic flows that killed about 9,500 people near the volcano; but it was the resulting tsunami that claimed the other 5,500 lives farther away.

The 1985 eruption of Nevado del Ruiz, Columbia also produced pyroclastic flows. However, these flows were perceived as non-threatening as they were small and stayed near the summit of the volcano - far away from the villages that resided at the lowest levels of the volcano's flanks. It was not until the night of Novemberr 13, 1985 that this volcano's deadliest hazard was revealed.

As the small pyroclastic flows melted snow at the summit of the volcano, large lahars, or volcanic mudflows, were being produced and making their way as a torrent down the flanks of the volcano. Without any warning, the sleeping town of Armero, Columbia was inundated by boiling hot mudflows and 23,000 people were killed in one night.

Hazards produced by the 1902 eruption of Mont Pelee Volcano on the island of Martinique were opposite to those produced by the Nevado del Ruiz eruption. The Mont Pelee eruption generated massive pyroclastic flows that traveled down the flanks of the volcano and completely destroyed the sea-side town of Saint Pierre. Virtually every single person in this town - about 28,600 people - were burned alive, suffocated or buried alive by this fast-moving ash flow. Only one person survived the destruction - a lone prisoner housed in an underground jail chamber. Lahars killed another 400 people.

The 1883 eruption of Krakatau Volcano, Indonesia, is well-known for its destruction and for the explosion that was heard almost 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) away. The Krakatau eruption produced pyroclastic flows and ash falls that killed about 4,600 people; but the deadliest hazard was the tsunami that was created when the flanks of the volcano collapsed into the ocean during the violent explosion. The tsunami was not expected and came as a tragic surprise to villagers living in the low-lying coastal communities surrounding the island volcano.

About 32,000 people were killed by the tsunamis, making the 1883 eruption one of the deadliest in history.

The Deadliest Volcanic Eruption in Recorded History

By far, the deadliest and most destructive volcanic eruption recorded in modern human history is the 1815 eruption of Tambora Volcano, Indonesia. This eruption - the most powerful in recorded history - produced an ash column that ejected enough volcanic material into the atmosphere to change the global climate.

Even a year after the eruption, the Tambora volcanic cloud cooled the atmosphere so much that 1816 was known in Europe and North America as "the year without a summer." About 11,000 people near the volcano died during the eruption from pyroclastic flows and ash falls. The real devastation, however, came with the failure of crops, which led to famine and disease in the region that killed another 49,000 people.

Las Vegas Mirage introduces new face of volcano

2008-12-14T13:29:00.000-06:00

This time of year, there's often a chill in the air in Las Vegas, as temperatures some nights dip into the 30s. But starting Monday evening, people making their way down the sidewalk may choose to shed their mittens and caps as they reach the Mirage, where there'll be plenty of heat coming from an erupting "volcano."

Since the hotel's opening in 1989, its mock volcano -- towering over a 3-acre lagoon along Las Vegas Boulevard -- has become a Sin City landmark.

The free attraction has been dormant since February, though, while it underwent a face-lift. And far from just a few tucks here and there, this is a $25-million overall redo.

A motorcycle jump on the brink of '09

Those seeking an even hotter spectacle may want to drop by New Year's Eve. That's the night motorcycle daredevil Robbie Knievel is preparing to jump more than 200 feet across the lagoon as the jets shoot fire and water skyward. Fox TV will broadcast the event live, beginning at 8 p.m., with the jump scheduled for 9 p.m. Knievel is expected to travel 100 mph during the feat, which is to begin on hotel property and end on the Strip.

The stunt will take place 41 years to the day after Robbie's father, Evel Knievel, was seriously injured when he lost control of his bike during a jump over the fountains at Caesars Palace, next door to the Mirage.

-- Jay Jones

The creators of the new volcano, Wet Design in Sun Valley, Calif., have some pretty impressive credentials. Besides designing water features for Disney and Universal, this team also did the stunning, dancing fountains at Bellagio, just a few blocks down the boulevard.

"What Wet does is sort of 'nature under control,' the highly stylized, highly choreographed pieces using water," says Jim Doyle, a company director. "This is the first time we've been able to do it -- and had a client crazy enough to try it -- with flame. That's the big change here, taking a quantum step forward with flame choreography."

Doyle calls this latest creation "a beast." It thrives on a diet of water and natural gas, both of which are fed through a maze of pipes behind the volcano's artificial rock facade.

Submerged in the lagoon are 120 sophisticated flamethrowers that will send jets of fire skyward on cue. Choreographers working on laptops are busy fine-tuning the fountains of flame -- and water too -- so that the software program matches the original music to the movements of the fire and water.

Performed on drums and the tabla, an Indian percussion instrument, the music has a primal beat that's well-suited to a show that replicates the belching of molten lava from deep inside the Earth. The score is performed by Grammy winners Mickey Hart, a former drummer for the Grateful Dead, and Zakir Hussain, a master musician from India.

As the music builds to a crescendo near the close of the 4 1/2 -minute performance, designer Doyle has Daisy, the massive flamethrower that's mounted atop the volcano, ready to leap into action.

"It's an exclamation point for the show," Doyle says of the giant torch, which is twice the size of a previous creation of his in Australia.

"It doesn't [shoot fire] up as much as it does out," he adds. The result is a temperature spike that far surpasses that of any backyard patio heater, turning a chilly winter night into a summer scorcher.
"This one's going to blow you away," says Scott Sibella, president of the Mirage. He adds that the costly attraction is designed to showcase a $110-million makeover of the entire property. It's been completed just in time for the hotel's 20th anniversary celebration.

Sibella says next year's advertising campaign will feature the catch phrase, "Have you seen the new Mirage?"

"Some of our competitors have let their properties go to the wayside," he says. On the other hand, Sibella says that -- when it comes to popularity and revenue -- the Mirage "still does very well for a 19- [or] 20-year-old property."

Jones is a freelance writer.

Volcano due to erupt in Las Vegas by the New Year!

2008-12-06T22:13:00.000-06:00

A dormant Las Vegas volcano is expected to begin erupting by the end of December.
The volcano is situated alongside of The Strip, in front of The Mirage resort.

The hourly eruptions during the evening hours are expected to exceed the former eruptions that have enthralled visitors since its first spewing some 12 years ago and lasted until a shutdown early this year. The revitalized volcano will feature massive fireballs that shoot 12 feet above the rim of the volcano, and lava streams that course down the sides and steamily splash into the lagoon at its base. The lagoon will then erupt in flames, coming within feet of the sidewalk in front of the resort that normally will be jammed with spectators.

The Fountains of Bellagio design team WET has been in charge of the overhaul, a portion of the massive upgrading of the resort. Mickey Hart, legendary drummer of the Grateful Dead, and Indian tabla sensation Zakir Hussain, were enlisted by the design team to produce a spectacular production that combines sound, light, music and heat.

The volcano at The Mirage was the first spectacular show that was free to the general public. When it first began erupting, it brought traffic on Las Vegas Boulevard to a standstill. The Mirage is the resort that is credited with being the project that revitalized the Las Vegas resort building boom.

SEASONAL CHANGES

For those who miss the wintertime weather of more northerly locations, a visit to the Bellagio or Sam's Town might bring back memories.

The Conservatory and Botanical Gardens of Bellagio open its winter wonderland makeover on Sunday and remain until January 3. A 32-foot-tall Shasta fir will be the centerpiece, festooned with enormous ornaments and 12,000 LED Christmas lights. There will be 15-foot-tall toy soldiers, flying reindeer, a snowman family, a 7-foot-tall rocking horse, and a gigantic holiday wreath. All of the features will be composed of flowers, plants, leaves, vines, seeds, and nuts.

The Conservatory is on the main floor just beyond the registration counter. It is open 24/7.
Mystic Falls and Park at Sam's Town on the Boulder Strip has been turned into another winter wonderland. A holiday laser and light show is presented at 6, 8 and 10 p.m. daily and snow will fall in the park. The atrium park is open 24/7. It is located in the center of the hotel towers so guests staying at in-facing rooms of the resort can watch the shows from their room.

Many resorts and casinos deck out some of the staff in holiday themes, but none do it better than the Hard Rock. The cheerful red costumes are enough to make Santa forget his duties.

Other seasonal changes affect the shows in town. Many shows are closing down for the second half of December so performers can get a rest and producers can make changes. Most will reopen before the long New Year's Eve weekend. If you are planning a December trip, be sure it won't be dark when you are in town.

Mamma Mia will end a 6-year run when it closes down on Jan. 4 at its present location at Mandalay Bay.

Defending the Caveman has concluded its run at the Golden Nugget, stepping aside for the return of Gordie Brown. Caveman will reopen at the Excalibur Dec.16 to Jan 11.

Danny Gans, often voted the best act in Las Vegas, has closed an 8-plus year gig at The Mirage. He will reopen in the Danny Gans Theater in the Encore.

AND OTHER HAPPENINGS

The featured restaurant at the-soon-to-be-opened Encore will be named Sinatra, after the legendary performer and Las Vegas regular.

An agreement between Steve Wynn, an old friend of Ol' Blue Eyes, and the estate of the performer, will place memorabilia at the restaurant. Included will be Sinatra's only Oscar -- for best male performer in "From Here to Eternity."

The Game Show Network will be filming at The Grand Poker Room at the Golden Nugget Dec. 19 to 21.

Reach Bruce Camenga at features@pe.com.

Seismic signals preceding volcanic eruptions have been simulated in lab for the 1st time!

2008-12-06T16:14:00.000-06:00

For the first time, seismic signals that precede a volcanic eruption have been simulated and visualized in 3-D under controlled pressure conditions in a laboratory. The ability to conduct such simulations will better equip municipal authorities in volcanic hot spots around the world in knowing when to alert people who live near volcanoes of an impending eruption.

The international research team that conducted the experiments at the University of Toronto published its findings in an article in the journal, Science, on Oct. 10.

Scientists tested fracture properties of basalt rock from Mount Etna, the active volcano found on the island of Sicily in southern Italy. They were able to record the seismic signals that are routinely generated during earthquakes that occur before volcanic eruptions. The seismic (sound) waves recorded by the team were similar to those emitted by a church organ pipe and are ubiquitous in active volcanic regions.

"The holy grail of volcano research is to be able to predict with complete accuracy when and how exactly a volcano will erupt," said Philip Benson, Marie-Curie Research Fellow in Earth Sciences at University College London (UCL), who conducted the experiments in U of T's Rock Fracture Dynamics Facility. "We are not there yet and, frankly, we may never be able to achieve that level of detail. However, being able to simulate the pressure conditions and events in volcanoes greatly assists geophysicists in exploring the scientific basis for volcanic unrest, ultimately helping cities and towns near volcanoes know whether to evacuate or not."

Benson noted that nearly 500 million people live near enough to the Earth's 600 active volcanoes to endure physical and economic harm should a serious eruption occur. "That is why improved understanding of volcanic mechanisms is a central goal in volcano-tectonic research and hazard mitigation."

The international collaborators in the simulation experiments were Sergio Vinciguerra of the National Geophysics and Volcano Institute (INGV) in Rome, Italy; Philip Meredith of the Rock and Ice Physics Laboratory at UCL; and Paul Young, Keck Chair of Seismology and Rock Mechanics at the University of Toronto and the university's vice-president (research).

Young noted that while this particular rock fracture research focused on volcano dynamics, the knowledge generated from investigation into rock fracturing also has direct application in a wide variety of areas, such as mining, construction of buildings and bridges, oil and gas exploration and in earthquakes and other earth sciences phenomena.

Researchers used equipment funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation.

Students learn about volcanoes through scientific experiments

2008-11-29T23:02:00.000-06:00

Students in Vince Albanese's science class at Marco Island Charter Middle School recently completed volcanoes as part of a class project. Each class brought their created volcanic masterpieces outside, used baking soda and colored vinegar and waited for an eruption.

The kids used paper mache, plaster and foam to build the erupting mountains.Many added a personal decorative touch to their volcanoes with paint, plants, rocks and more and constructed the volcanoes around water bottles.

Baking soda was placed inside the bottles and when it was time for an eruption, the students placed their volcanoes on a table and poured vinegar into the bottle, then quickly plugged the bottle with a cork. Lastly, they wait for the baking soda-vinegar combination to react and send the cork into the air with the 'lava.'

Albanese said the chemistry lesson he hopes the students learn is that a weak acid ‹ vinegar, and a weak base ‹ baking soda, usually form a gas.

Underwater volcanoes are now a hot topic

2008-11-24T09:42:00.000-06:00

Geologist Dr. Mark Hannington didn't think he would see ocean floor mining in his lifetime.
"I honestly never thought this would happen," he said. "But it's going to and it's quite incredible."
Mark Hannington addresses questions from the audience at the 2008 Geoscience Forum after his presentation on ocean floor volcanoes.

Hannington, a geology professor, researcher and fifth editor of the international research journal Economic Geology, gave a presentation Tuesday evening titled "Exploring Active Volcanoes on the Ocean Floor" to more than 80 people at the legislative assembly's Great Hall. The presentation was part of the 2008 Geoscience Forum being held in Yellowknife this week.

Hannington's presentation focused on underwater volcanic activity and the significance it has to mineral deposits forming on the ocean floor.

"Eighty per cent of all volcanoes on Earth are underwater," he said. "There are about 1,500 active volcanoes on land and some 15,000 to 20,000 underwater younger than 190 years old."

Created by satellite imaging, the map they use of the ocean floor is a model based on gravity and isn't an actual topographic map, but is the best available map of the ocean floor.

"By measuring deflections in the sea surface, basically bumps on the surface of the ocean you could calculate a gravitation effect of something sitting on the ocean floor," he explained.

Hannington explained how "black smokers", or sea vents, produce metals on the ocean floor. A black smoker is a type of hydrothermal vent found on the ocean floor. The vent is formed from superheated water from below the crust of the Earth coming through the ocean floor. The water is rich in dissolved minerals from the crust, most notably sulfides. When it comes in contact with cold ocean water, many minerals precipitate, forming a black chimney-like structure around each vent. The metal sulfides that are deposited can become sulphide ore deposits.

"It creates mining opportunities. The only thing is would it be a money making venture or not," said Hannington.

Nautilus Minerals, a mining company, plans to start mining at its Solwara 1 project off the coast of Papua New Guinea in 2010. Seabed mining is something Canadian mining companies might be able to profit from in the future, said Harrington, he said but this is yet to be seen.

"There is a lot of potential benefits but there is also possible environmental effects that could be devastating."

Man says he can read moods of volcanoes

2008-11-23T15:42:00.001-06:00

As a child, Andrew McGonigle couldn’t decide between two subjects he had a passion for — geography and physics.

Eventually he chose to go with physics, but all he wanted to do was to get back to studying the earth and environmental sciences. So when a position came up for a physicist to monitor volcanic gas plumes, he did not think twice and there has been no looking back for him since then.

Scottish physicist McGonigle is one of the Rolex Enterprise Award 2008 laureates. He was honoured recently for his contribution to study on prediction of volcanic eruptions. Inspired by a technology that helps in glacier mapping, McGonigle created a remote-controlled two-metre-long helicopter that he would fly over the volcanic mountains of Etna and Stromboli. The technology created by him will help predict, weeks in advance, whether the mountains would erupt. The prediction would help save lives and property.

McGonigle has specialised in the study of air pollution and volcanic gases by using lasers and other sensing devices. He has climbed over 15 of the 60 most active volcanoes, and analysed the gas signatures of many more. His works have proved decisive for volcanic research all over, but it was the coupling of science with the emerging technology of remote-controlled aircraft that was the stroke of genius, leading to his selection for a Rolex award.

In March 2007, McGonigle, with the help of David Fisher and Prof. Alessandro Aiuppa of the Italian National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, developed the prototype helicopter AERVOLC 1 and flew over a fuming vent of Vulcano, a volcanic cone near Sicily. The instruments recorded levels of sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide and wind speed, enabling the scientists to calculate the flow of gases from the volcano.

“For me the biggest breakthrough was getting it all to work on the test flight. I was almost in tears,” said McGonigle.

He added that he and his associates were sure of the technology’s capability to predict a volcanic eruption weeks to months ahead.

McGonigle said, “Prediction of volcanic eruptions would be a lot easier now with this technology and it can save thousands of lives. Today hundreds of millions of people in many countries dwell in the shadows of volcanic mountains in constant fear of eruption. Once the technology has been perfected it will be distributed to volcanologists all over.”

dhanusha@khaleejtimes.com

Volcano Art

2008-11-23T15:38:00.000-06:00

Printmaker/illustrator Dietrich Varez, dollmaker turned painter Linda Stevens, woodworkers Harold and Marilyn Rhodes, potter Greg Smith, glass artist Patricia Larsen-Goodin and dozens of Hawaii artists and artisans are helping the Volcano Art Center kick off the holiday season with its Christmas in the Country celebration.

It takes place over two weekends, beginning Saturday and Sunday and continuingNov. 28, 29 and 30. The festivities take place at the Volcano Art Center Gallery, located in the historic 1877 Volcano House adjacent to the Kilauea Visitor Center in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.Original wreaths will be available at the annual Invitational Wreath Exhibit.

Gallery artists, working in a wide variety of media, materials and techniques, present their highly creative concepts of "wreath." Just for the holiday season, the gallery displays Hawaii-handcrafted ornaments, home decorations and gifts not found the rest of the year, including ornaments by Stevens that are Volcano Art Center exclusives.

The exhibit continues through Jan. 4.From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Varez is debuting four new prints, as well as signing books and copies of his other Hawaiiana prints. The new prints are titled "Damien of Molokai," "Pele with Silversword and Koae," a four-part one "Hawaiian Diver" and "The Birth of Hiiaka."

Stevens will be showing visitors some of the many methods she uses to make her "Christmas critters" from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. Saturday. She'll be joined by Melia Goodenow who will be giving visitors sniffs of the various Hawaiian floral scents used in Hawaiian Rain Forest Naturals products. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday, Larsen-Goodin will demonstrate her lampworking skills, making glass beads using a gas torch.

After Thanksgiving, Varez returns from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. Nov. 28 to personalize everyone's selection from his huge collection of affordable prints as well as copies of the many books he has illustrated. The Rhodes are joining Varez. They will demonstrate how they use a variety of heirloom tools -- spokeshaves, shrapers, drawknives -- to shape their walking sticks and kitchen utensils. They also will show hobbyists how their techniques can be used in any woodworking project.

From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Nov. 28 and 29, Ocean View potter Smith will be on hand with a wide selection of his "wasabi" style wind chimes, teacups and pots.The Volcano Art Center Gallery is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and is wheelchair accessible.

Call 967-7565 or visit http://www.volcanoartcenter.org for more information. National park user fees apply for those without passes.the Country begins Saturday.

Underwater volcano is now protected!

2008-11-23T15:34:00.000-06:00

Its slopes are thick with coral forests that grow 10 feet high. Fields of colorful sponges cover its rocky outcroppings. And marine species that until recently had never been seen by scientists teem all around it. On Thursday, a giant underwater volcano off California's Central Coast that some have compared to an aquatic "Lost World," was given national protection.

Davidson Seamount stands 7,546 feet above the ocean floor, in pitch black waters about 80 miles southwest of Monterey. Until eight years ago, almost nothing was known about it, largely because its summit sits 4,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean.

But as marine biologists began to send unmanned submarines to explore it, they found a
pristine environment rich with life, from red crabs with spindle legs to anemones that close like Venus flytraps.

"We were astounded to discover the variety of life, and particularly the size of the animals," said Dave Clague, a geologist with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) in Moss Landing. "Some of the corals are truly huge. The big pink bubble gum corals get at least 10 feet tall. And they are hundreds of years old. We'd never seen anything like that."

On Thursday, the Bush administration published final regulations to expand the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary by 14 percent to include Davidson Seamount. The first such expansion since Congress and President Bush's father established the sanctuary.

in 1992, the newly protected waters total 775 square miles — an area more than half the size of Yosemite National Park.

All offshore oil drilling is banned in the Monterey sanctuary, which stretches from the Marin headlands near the Golden Gate Bridge along 276 miles of coastline to Hearst Castle. With the new boundaries, the drilling ban will be extended to Davidson Seamount, as will other regulations prohibiting harmful fishing practices, mining and other exploitation.

Scientists from MBARI and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have conducted 14 expeditions to Davidson Seamount since 2000.

They have collected dozens of samples of corals, sponges, clams, fish and other marine life on which to perform DNA tests and other experiments, using remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs.
But 99 percent of the seamount remains unexplored.

"We see whatever we can catch in the lights of an ROV. It's like sampling the Sierra Nevada only by what we can see from headlights of a car. It will take a long time to fully explore it all," said Bill Douros, West Coast regional director for the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.

The area was not included among the sanctuary's original boundaries, he said, because "in 1992, it was simply a point on a chart. Nobody had ever been there or seen it."

The seamount last had a volcanic eruption 9.8 million years ago. Another eruption is highly unlikely, Clague said. If it did erupt, lava would remain below the surface.

The rules giving the seamount permanent protection will become final in mid-March, with no changes unless Congress orders them, which is not expected.

They were part of a package of new NOAA regulations updating the management plans for three California marine sanctuaries: Monterey Bay, Gulf of the Farallones and Cordell Bank.

The plans also set strict new rules for personal watercraft, known commonly as jet skis, so that the crafts, which environmentalists say harass otters and other wildlife, are confined to four small areas, and can only be used in winter months to tow in surfers to Maverick's, the area off Half Moon Bay known for its massive waves.

The new rules also ban cruise ships from dumping any sewage in sanctuary waters. And they ban all forms of shark chumming, a practice of dumping blood into the water by thrill seekers and filmmakers to attract great white sharks but one that can endanger surfers.

The sanctuary expansion adds to the ocean legacy of President Bush. Bush has drawn sharp criticism from environmentalists for relaxing oil drilling rules and other conservation laws.
In 2006, he created the largest protected marine area in the world, off the northern Hawaiian Islands, and also has pushed measures to ban shark finning and to protect the Florida Everglades.
"Although he hasn't been widely considered an environmental president, he does have a history of some leadership on ocean issues," said Kaitilin Gaffney, a program manager with the Ocean Conservancy in Santa Cruz.

"To me, the Davidson Seamount is the classic crown jewel that the sanctuary program was set up to protect. It's just spectacular."

Trinidad & Tobago: Home of mud volcanoes

2008-11-23T15:14:00.000-06:00

Trinidad & Tobago’s dynamic landscape and diverse eco-system provide a myriad of options to travelers seeking that unforgettable vacation experience. The destination is home to lush tropical rainforests, mountainous terrains and boundless sun-kissed beaches. These locations provide idyllic settings for world-class eco-adventures such as hiking, biking and birding.

Trinidad & Tobago’s unique surroundings also offer visitors a variety of extraordinary attractions and unusual activities that include exploring underground grottos, viewing mud volcanoes and swimming in the destination’s asphalt lake and offshore lagoon. Cave Exploration, Trinidad Most of Trinidad’s Northern Range comprises of limestone caves such as the Sea Caves at Las Cuervas Beach and the Aripo Caves.

The Dunstans Caves, located on the Asa Wright Nature Reserve, is home to the oilbird or guacharo, the world’s only nocturnal fruit-eating bird. The caves also feature a crystal clear pool that adds to the mystery of these underground grottos.

Another place of interest is the Gasparee Caves, which lie below the ground on the island of Gaspar Grande, located off Trinidad’s northwest coast. It is known to be the site where pirates and smugglers once used to secure stolen treasures. Pitch Lake, Trinidad This natural phenomenon, situated in the village of La Brea in southwest Trinidad, has fascinated explorers, scientists and locals since its discovery by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595.

About 250 feet deep at its center, it is estimated to have reserves in excess of 6 million tons, from which approximately 180 tons of pitch are mined daily. On a good day, the output can reach 240 tons. Far from being water, the “lake” is 40 percent pitch, 30 percent water and 30 percent colloidal clay. The only liquid source is the self-replenishing center, known as “The Mother of the Lake.” A gift of nature and a national treasure, The Pitch Lake provides the entire country, and many of the neighboring islands with pitch for building roads.

From a distance the lake appears to be an abandoned car park and visitors can be seen walking on the surface or even swimming, with the hopes of gaining what some believe to be the lake’s healing properties. Mud Volcano, Trinidad Trinidad is one of the few countries in the world where mud volcanoes are prevalent. They are locally referred to as "bouffe" (French for swelling) or by the original Amerindian term guaico, meaning "mud-stream". By definition however, mud volcanoes are areas where there is an extrusion of watery mud or clay, accompanied by or sometimes forced by methane gas.

When the mud is of a dry consistency, a volcanic shape is usually formed and the wet mud tends to result in depressions. One of the most popular mud volcanoes in Trinidad is the Piparo mud volcano (known by some as Morne Roche) located in South Trinidad, just east of Marabella. It reaches an elevation of 365 feet (150 feet in relation to the surrounding land) and covers some 425 acres. This mud volcano usually sits dormant, but occasionally spews mud hundreds of feet into the air. The largest recorded eruption occurred in February 1997.

Piparo is considered the most accessible and the most visited mud volcano on the island with recreational facilities including a children’s play area and picnic tables located in close proximity of the volcano. Nylon Pool, Tobago Considered a veritable tranquil paradise in the center of the ocean, the Nylon Pool is located right next to what is dubbed one of the most beautiful places in the Caribbean, Buccoo Reef.

The Nylon Pool was named by Princess Margaret during her visit to Tobago in 1962, when she commented that the water was as clear as her nylon stockings. This natural, meter-deep swimming pool is formed from an offshore sandbar and still lagoon in the middle of the sea. With the deep ocean on one side and palm fringed beaches on the other, the shallow waters and powder-soft sand provide a secluded island oasis.

In addition, the unique feature of the reef complex allows swimmers to enjoy their own private swimming pool with depths no greater than 7-10 feet at high tide. Local folklore promises that a dip in the waters of the Nylon Pool will make you look five years younger.

Helicopter could predict volcanic eruptions

2008-11-22T15:33:00.000-06:00

A SCOT who invented a remote control helicopter that can be used to predict where volcanic eruptions will take place has won a $100,000 (£67,000) award.

Dr Andrew McGonigle, a physicist, thinks the helicopter, which is flown over the crater of volcanoes, could be used across the world to help save millions of lives.It is fitted with technology that tests for carbon dioxide in the air above the volcano, which is usually released weeks, if not months, before the molten magma erupts to the surface.Until now, the process of measuring the gases from volcanoes to predict when they will erupt has been dangerous.Scientists have had to get close to the volcano, using devices such as sensors attached to the rim of the crater.

However, the helicopter can be operated miles from the site, meaning that no lives need be put at risk.Dr McGonigle, 35, was last night awarded a Laureate of the 2008 Rolex Awards for Enterprise. The senior research fellow at the University of Sheffield, who grew up in Edinburgh, received the award at a ceremony in Dubai. He was chosen, with four others, from nearly 1,500 applicants in 127 countries.

Other winners included Andrew Muir, from South Africa, who is helping Aids orphans get jobs in his country's ecotourism sector, and Elsa Zaldívar, from Paraguay, who is creating building materials made from plant and plastic waste.

Moon's volcanic history has more to tell than first thought by scientists

2008-11-15T22:30:00.000-06:00

New images from the Japanese lunar satellite KAGUYA have revealed dark "seas" of volcanic rock that are as young as 2.5 million years old, which indicates that volcanoes shook up the far side of the moon for far longer than scientists thought.

According to a report in National Geographic News, until recently, the prevailing belief was that lunar volcanism started soon after the moon formed, about 4.5 billion years ago, and ended about 3 billion years ago. KAGUYA, which was launched and began orbiting the moon in the fall of 2007, has sent back some of the first high-resolution images of the moon's dark side.

Using these images, the research team was able to manually count craters in several regions. Scientists can determine the age of a lunar landscape by counting the craters that have been blasted into its surface by meteors. The older a region, the more craters it has. There are fewer craters on the far side's lunar maria, or seas, than expected, meaning they're younger than presumed.

"The finding will lead the scientific community to reconsider the early geology of the moon," said lead study author Jun'ichi Haruyama of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.Scientists believe that early in the moon's formation, which was probably caused when a Mars-sized planet hit the Earth, light minerals floated to the top of a magma, or molten-rock, ocean, forming a harder crust. Even after the crust had been fully formed, by about 3.2 billion years ago, the mantle melted occasionally and lava flowed on the lunar surface.

Sometimes, meteor hits could trigger eruptions. Most of the volcanism occurred on the near side in several phases, according to Carle Pieters, a geologist at Brown University and a study co-author. But, there are relatively few basalts-glassy rocks formed by cooling magma-on the far side of the moon, so it was thought that volcanic activity had ended early in that hemisphere. According to the study, the volcanism that formed the few maria on the far side "lasted longer than previously considered and may have occurred episodically."

"The thermal history of the moon is certainly more complex than originally thought," Pieters said. "After a great data famine, this feast of quality new information about the moon will open a renaissance of scientific exploration and new understanding of Earth's nearest neighbor," he added.