A team of University of Oregon scientists is home after a month-long cruise in the eastern Mediterranean, but this was no vacation. The focus was the plumbing system of magma underneath the island of Santorini, formed by the largest supervolcanic eruption in the past 10,000 years.
Precise reconstruction of regional climate changes in the past.
Reconstructing the magnitude of past volcanic eruptions is important in informing predictions about future eruptions and hazards. This is difficult to accomplish from records on land -- old eruptions are often eroded away, buried beneath later eruptions, or obscured by vegetation and soil. Most volcanoes are close to the oceans, so much of the erupted material falls into seawater and accumulates on the seafloor.
A new "geospeedometer" that can measure the amount of time between the formation of an explosive magma melt and an eruption confirms that the process took less than 500 years in several ancient super-eruptions.
The first simulation of the individual crystals in volcanic mush, a mix of liquid magma and solid crystals, shows the mixing to help understand pressure buildup deep inside a volcano.
To combat complacency and improve disaster preparedness, a University at Buffalo researcher is heading a new project focusing on two locations: Kīlauea in the Hawaiian Islands, and the Long Valley caldera and volcanic field in eastern central California.
Large volcanic eruptions inject considerable amounts of sulphur in the stratosphere which, once converted into aerosols, block sun rays and tend to cool the surface of the Earth down for several years. An international team of researchers has just developed a method, published in Nature Geoscience, to accurately measure and simulate the induced drop in temperature.
Luke Bowman, who received his PhD from Michigan Tech this summer, gets to the heart of geohazards on the San Vicente Volcano in El Salvador.
New research led by the University of Adelaide hopes to close the debate on whether a major mud volcano disaster in Indonesia was triggered by an earthquake or had man-made origins.
University of Utah seismologists discovered and made images of a reservoir of hot, partly molten rock 12 to 28 miles beneath the Yellowstone supervolcano, and it is 4.4 times larger than the shallower, long-known magma chamber. The hot rock in the newly discovered, deeper magma reservoir would fill the 1,000-cubic-mile Grand Canyon 11.2 times.
By crushing minerals between diamonds, a University of Utah study suggests the existence of an unknown layer inside Earth: part of the lower mantle where the rock gets three times stiffer. The discovery may explain a mystery: why slabs of Earth’s sinking tectonic plates sometimes stall and thicken 930 miles underground.
URI doctoral student Brennan Phillips is on the hunt for underwater volcanoes so he can collect data on the plumes of hot fluids and chemical compounds emanating from hydrothermal vents in and around the craters. His latest adventure took him to the unexplored Kavachi volcano off the Solomon Islands.
Research on underwater volcanoes, Great Lakes pollution, subseafloor life and much more will be among the 40 projects that will be presented by scientists from the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography at the American Geophysical Union’s fall meeting in San Francisco from Dec. 15 to 19.
For seven years, an area larger than the city of Madison has been rising by 10 inches per year. That rapid rise provides a major scientific opportunity: to explore a mega-volcano before it erupts. That effort, and the hazard posed by the restless magma reservoir beneath Laguna del Maule, are described in a major research article in the December issue of GSA Today.
The surface of Mars clearly shows what looks like evidence of flowing water: riverbeds, deltas, and the like. But these signs have been a puzzle – until now. The Weizmann Institute’s Dr. Itay Halevy and Brown University’s Dr. James Head III have identified a possible source: violent eruptions from massive volcanoes that periodically melted Mars’ ice.
By measuring how fast Earth conducts electricity and seismic waves, a University of Utah researcher and colleagues made a detailed picture of Mount Rainier’s deep volcanic plumbing and partly molten rock that will erupt again someday.
University and government scientists are embarking on a collaborative research expedition to improve volcanic eruption forecasting by learning more about how a deep-underground feeder system creates and supplies magma to Mount St. Helens.
A temporary seismic array in Marie Byrd Land in West Antarctica recorded two bursts of activity in 2010 and 2011. Careful analysis of the events shows they originate from a subglacial volcano at the leading end of a volcanic mountain chain. The volcano is unlikely to erupt through the kilometer of ice that covers it but it will melt enough ice to change the way the ice in its vicinity flows.
A study finds that hollow, land-based lava pillars in Iceland likely formed in a surprising reaction where lava met water without an explosion. Such formations are common deep under the ocean, but have not been described on land, the lead researcher says.
Reservoirs of silica-rich magma – the kind that causes the most explosive volcanic eruptions – can persist in Earth's upper crust for hundreds of thousands of years without triggering an eruption, according to new University of Washington research.
Earth scientists are laying plans for a two-year study covering a broad area of southwestern Washington state to develop a better understanding of how Mount St. Helens gets its supply of volcanic magma.
Swarms of small earthquakes can precede a volcanic eruption, sometimes resulting in "harmonic tremor" resembling sound from some musical instruments. A new analysis shows tremor during a 2009 sequence at Alaska's Redoubt Volcano glided to substantially higher frequencies, then stopped abruptly just before six of the eruptions.
Since the plate tectonics revolution of the 1960s, scientists have known that new seafloor is created throughout the major ocean basins at linear chains of volcanoes known as mid-ocean ridges. But where exactly does the erupted magma come from?
Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have found a layer of liquefied molten rock in Earth’s mantle that may be acting as a lubricant for the sliding motions of the planet’s massive tectonic plates. The discovery may carry far-reaching implications, from solving basic geological functions of the planet to a better understanding of volcanism and earthquakes.
A University of Utah seismologist analyzed seismic waves that bombarded Earth’s core, and believes he got a look at the earliest roots of Earth’s most cataclysmic kind of volcanic eruption. But don’t worry. He says it won’t happen for perhaps 200 million years.
Research shows that the Kamchatka Peninsula and Kuril Islands, long shrouded in secrecy by the Soviet government, are a seismic and volcanic hotbed with a potential to trigger tsunamis that pose a risk to the rest of the Pacific Basin.
A new University at Buffalo-led study is providing insight into the explosive mechanisms of volcanoes that erupt just once, and then die.
A rare large-scale attempt by UB researchers to simulate volcanic eruptions is drawing international attention because it will provide much-needed insight into one of Earth's most powerful and mysterious natural disasters.
Scientists widely believe that volcanic particle size is determined by the initial fragmentation process, when bubbly magma deep in the volcano changes into gas-particle flows. But new Georgia Tech research indicates a more dynamic process where the amount and size of volcanic ash actually depend on what happens afterward, as the particles race toward the surface.
Super-eruptions are potentially civilization-ending events and new research suggests that they may have surprisingly short fuses.
Volcanoes emit a broad spectrum of sonic energy. In the case of basaltic eruptions, most of that acoustical energy in the infrasound range. A new study reveals that this low-frequency sound can give scientists an enhanced understanding of the behavior of volcanoes and a tool to monitor the lifecycles of their eruptions.
University at Buffalo volcanologist Michael Sheridan can discuss Mexico’s Popocatepetl volcano, which has entered a heightened phase of activity. Sheridan has been studying Popocatepetl for years.
Jennifer Jay es estudiante de postgrado en la Universidad de Cornell, estudiando la geofísica, o sea, la física de la Tierra, con una especialidad en el volcanismo de la cordillera de los Andes. Ella trabaja con el professor Mattew Pritchard y otro estudiante de postgrado, Scott Henderson. Dentro de pocos días, ellos viajarán a Chile para hacer una investigación geofísico de la región volcanica llamaba Lazufre. Trabajarán con un equipo de geofísicos de la Universidad de Alaska, Fairbanks, y unos colaboradores chilenos
Matt Pritchard, Cornell associate professor of geology, comments as part of an international effort to study Bolivia’s Uturuncu volcano, where the magma is uplifting rapidly. Uturuncu last erupted about 300,000 years ago.
The first scientists to witness molten lava from a deep sea volcano now report that the eruption was near a tear in the Earth’s crust that is mimicking the birth of a subduction zone. Earth’s current subduction zones are continually evolving but most formed 5 million to 200 million years ago.
Engineers note that ash ingestion in jet engines can impede performance and pose serious dangers.
Exotic bacteria that do not rely on oxygen may have played an important role in determining the composition of Earth’s early atmosphere, according to a theory that UChicago researcher Albert Colman of a volcanic crater in Siberia.
Researchers have discovered that a new class of ceramic coatings could offer jet engines special protection against volcanic ash damage.
University of Utah geophysicists made the first large-scale picture of the electrical conductivity of the plume of partly molten rock that feeds the Yellowstone supervolcano. The image suggests the plume is bigger than it appears in earlier images made with earthquake waves.
Researchers have found a new way to gauge the depth of the magma chamber that forms the Hawaiian Island volcanic chain, and determined that the magma lies much closer to the surface than previously thought.
Months of volcanic restlessness preceded the eruptions this spring of Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull, providing insight into what roused it from centuries of slumber.
Study in Nature suggests that some mountains in "mobile belts" -- regions of crustal fragments, such as in the Mediterranean, the Rockies, and the Himalayas -- can rise due to upward pressure from the semi-liquid mantle. The study proposes a model for predicting uplift and likely volcanic hotspots in such regions.
Rudiger Escobar Wolf, a former employee of the Guatemalan volcanic disaster agency, is conducting research on volcanoes in the region.
They paved paradise and, it turns out, actually did put up a parking lot. A big one. Some 700 feet deep in the waters off California’s jewel of a coastal resort, Santa Barbara, sits a group of football-field-sized asphalt domes unlike any other underwater features known to exist. The deposits were discovered recently by scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and UC Santa Barbara (UCSB).
The dark clouds of volcanic ash that have closed airports and stranded travelers for days on end may have a silver lining, suggests an expert on human creativity from Washington University in St. Louis. Like it or note, stranded travelers around the globe are suddenly finding themselves with a lot of unscheduled time on their hands, and idle time is a key ingredient to becoming more creative in your personal and professional lives, says R. Keith Sawyer, PhD, an associate professor of education and of psychology, both in Arts & Sciences at Washington University.
Iceland is the only place on Earth where land sits atop a mid-ocean spreading center, says Sheila Seaman, professor of geosciences. Eyjafjallajokull’s eruption is of particular interest because it contains a lightweight, light-colored material which “has no reason whatsoever for being there.”
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