Gaua

Mt. Hood in Oregon, taken August 2008. Image by Erik Klemetti. Click on the image to see a larger version. Quick news! I'm not going to go into too much depth right now about the recent study published in Nature Geoscience on Mt. Hood in Oregon - I plan to talk about it more in a few weeks. Why is that? Well, the lead investigator on the study, Dr. Adam Kent of Oregon State University, is a friend of mine (and occasional Eruptions commenter) so I plan to get the details from him before posting. I was also peripherally associated with some of this work - mostly in the field acting as a pack…

An undated painting of the island volcano of Ischia near the Bay of Naples, Italy. Guess what? It is the end of the semester (well, school year) here at Denison, so I might be a little busy for the next couple weeks. Here are some news bits (with special thanks to all who emailed me some of these links): Boris might have more information or opinion on this, but Italy is back in the news concerning the threat of volcanism to the country. This time the volcano is Ischia, off the coast in the Bay of Naples. Guido Bertolaso of Italy's civil protection agency is quoted as saying that the "magma…

Gaua erupting in February 2010. Image courtesy of the NASA Earth Observatory. As a certain famous Icelandic native would say, "there is more to life than this." Some other volcano news from around the world: The situation at Gaua in Vanuatu is worsening. Ash from the current eruption is contaminating water and food supplies on the island. Authorities are planning on evacuating 3,000 people from the island if the eruption that started in 2009 gets worse, but there has already been significant ash fall, mudflows and explosions. Shiveluch on the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Russia continues…

This week's USGS/Smithsonian GVP Volcano Update! Highlights include: A volcano I had never heard of in the Kuril islands is showing signs of life: Kharimkotan. Satellite images show a thermal anomaly at the summit of the volcano - its last known eruption was in 1933. Ash, sulfur dioxide and steam continue to erupt from Nyamuragira in the Congo, although lava flows have abated. Crater C at Arenal had sporadic strombolian activity - which is par for the course for the Costa Rican volcano. I must have missed this, but since December 14, the ash erupted at Gaua in Vanuatu has become denser and…

Somehow I haven't posted a bunch of interesting items collected over the last few weeks, so I need to catch up. A pre-emptive hat tip to everyone who has sent me links or notes that might seem familiar in this post. Tungurahua in Ecuador erupting in 2000. First off, those of you looking for information on the Haitian earthquake that devastated the capitol Port Au Prince, Highly Allochthonous has post on the tectonics of the quake. Right now, it is hard for me to come up with a worse location in terms of devastation for a quake to have hit in the Caribbean Basin. Back in volcano news, a lot…

Here it is, my attempt to recap a year's worth of volcanic events. By no means is this supposed to capture every event, but rather the highlight/lowlights and what most captivated me during 2009. I'll be announcing the winner of the 2009 Pliny for Volcanic Event of the Year tomorrow. Waimangu Geothermal Valley in New Zealand, taken in January 2009 by Erik Klemetti. January The year started out with a trip to New Zealand (well, for me at least) and vistas of the Waimangu Valley, formed in the 1886 eruption of Tarawera on the North Island. We were also still thinking about the late 2008…

Maybe I should just apologize right here and now for that title, but dang, I liked it. Anyway, I've seen a lot of plume images cross my browser/inbox over the last day, so I thought I'd post a few of them. Soufriere Hills, Montserrat The renewed activity at Soufriere Hills has produced a bounty of plume images over the last week. The NASA Earth Observatory posted an image of the plume, which sometimes reached as high as 3.7 km / 12,000 feet (if not higher). Eruptions reader Alex Waning sent me some images of the top of the plume at ~3.7 km / 12,000 feet taken from a flight near Montserrat on…

We get a new update from the Smithsonian/USGS Global Volcanism Program ... Highlights (not counting Soufriere Hills or Gaua) include: The Weekly Report mentions the mystery eruption/noneruption of Karkar in PNG. Specifically, they report: The report also stated that ash had merged with a thunderstorm cloud and had become unidentifiable. Two ash plumes (11/25, 26) that reached at least 9.1 km / 30,000 feet were reported by the Darwin VAAC ... but as we know, it is far from clear that anything actually happened at Karkar last week. Activity has quieted significantly at Chaiten in Chile, with…

Back to work after Thanksgiving Break ... lets clean up a few news items I missed trying to figure out the non-eruption of Karkar. Undated photo of the summit area of Gaua, Vanuatu. There was an actual eruption - or, more correctly, a continued eruption - of Gaua in Vanuatu. The current activity has prompted the evacuation of 300 villagers from the island and they will not be able to return until activity wanes. Tourists were also told to stay away from the volcano, but the airport on the island has not been affected by the eruption, which might suggest the activity is relatively localized…

I did an excellent job of forgetting my notes from GSA 2009, so no wrap up on the meeting until tomorrow, but we do have some new volcano news to digest: The crater of El Reventador in Ecuador in an undated photo. Ecuadorian officials have called for evacuations around El Reventador. The Ecuadorian Geophysics Institute says that the volcano's "activities were measured at a level considered high, with permanent seismic signals indicating explosions while the southern side of the volcano crater could be seen as incandescent.". Three provinces near the volcano were put on alert evacuated as a…

A 1995 photo of Gaua volcano in Vanuatu. A few weeks ago I mentioned that there were signs that Mt. Garet, part of the larger Gaua volcano in Vanuatu was potentially showing signs of a eruption - the first since 1982. It turns out that the rumbling and sulfur odors reported by local residents were correct and it appears that Gaua did indeed erupt. The latest report from the Geo-Hazard section of the Department of Geology, Mines and Water Resources in Vanuatu: After the assessment of the Geohazards team on Gaua volcano from 3-7 October 2009, it is confirmed that Mont Garet volcano is going…

Gaua volcano in Vanuatu. Gaua volcano in Vanuatu is showing signs that it could be headed towards an eruption. News reports from the island nation in the south Pacific Ocean mention "increased seismic activity, generating sulphurous gas and ash into the atmosphere and affecting water supplies." However, officials in Vanuatu have only raised Gaua's alert status to 1 on a scale of 5 and stories of previous evacuations suggest that people might not take the volcano that seriously if it does continue to rumble: My father and one of my brothers was on Gaua when there was evacuation in 1973. They…