Sometimes, a volcano is nothing more than a hole in the ground. There are beautiful, though deeply eroded, cone volcanoes around Taal: Mount Banahaw, Mount Mariveles, Mount Natib – especially the latter also has a large caldera. But Taal is not like that. It is a lake, with only a little cone sticking out. The…
In my previous article I wrote that Taal most likely would not continue to erupt for a long period of time, based on the previous history of the volcano. Obviously Taal decided to go for something not recorded in the historic annals. It is therefore time to take a deeper look at what is going…
Guest post from Héctor (DustDevil). There will be a further update either later today or tomorrow as events have changed since Héctor wrote this post. The Main Crater of Taal seems to have calmed down, doesn’t it? However fissures are breaking the ground apart, the river dries, Lake Taal falls and strong earthquakes keep coming.…
This will probably become one of the most famous wedding pictures in history. I fear that this accidental picture will create a fashion and that people will try to recreate it at ever more dangerous volcanoes. In this case it was accidental, this wedding was most likely planned for weeks, if not months, prior to…
The Wrangell Mountains are an unexpected treasure in a land of riches. Here are shield volcanoes higher than Mauna Loa, which have grown up over the past 5 million years. It stands alone amidst the crowd. From the Wrangell Mountains, other mountains ranges can be seen in every direction, but none of those are currently…
Alaska is a wonderland. The harsh winters make the land difficult to live in, and in consequence much of the wilderness seems hardly touched by human hand. No need for rewilding here – it is wild enough to begin with! Amidst the wilderness are the most majestic mountains of North America, and some of its…
Guest post by Tallis The more I think about Chiles-Cerro Negro the more I get worried about it and the less simple the answer seems. I can’t seem to make sense of this system and its recent unrest. I have already written a piece on this system but I wasn’t entirely satisfied with it. I…
There is something about it. Gardening is a very human passion. Wherever there is nature, there is the urge to improve on it, removing the thorns, thistles and weeds, and replacing them with colour and fruit, adding beauty and harmony, a taming of the wild world, an artifice of flowers and pleasing shapes, where every…
It is with great sadness that we have learned that Henrik Lovén has passed away. Volcanocafe is run by volunteers, often people who have never met, may not know each other by face and communicate by chats. Such is the on-line world, where people are brought together by a shared interest. One of those volunteers…
Léon Prunelle November 14, 2014 If you haven’t yet quite decided what to ask for for Christmas, perhaps this post will give you some inspiration. It is a gem – editor The Earth is constantly being reshaped by the processes of creation, erosion and sedimentation. If looked at world-wide, there are two different types of “land”,…
The Bay of Plenty is an evocative name. The Bay is sandwiched between the two northerly peninsulas of The North Island. The name includes the adjacent land region, so this is a Bay you can live in. The geyser of Rotorua is world-renowned. So are the adjacent Taupo volcanoes, although not quite as widely publicised.…
16,000 years ago, Iceland was in the grip of ice. The sea was 100 meters lower than it is now, and the land extended far beyond the current coast. But too little benefit. The island was covered in an icecap which extended well beyond the current coast. At its peak (21.5 thousands years ago) the…
Re-posted, from January 24, 2014 Our dear Mike Ross is currently (that was written 5 years ago – editor) at the volcano on Ambrym Island in Vanuatu photographing a documentary. Apparently Ambrym means “Here are yams” in the local tongue. The volcano is a large shield volcano constructed by alternating layers of pyroclastic deposits and…
A re-post (edited) from Dec 6, 2014, by Schteve Vesuvio in Southern Italy (and alarmingly close to the huge conurbation of Naples) has been dormant since 1944. It was not always so quiet; as well as numerous and sometimes hugely devastating eruptions documented since 79 AD, the last 285 years have seen significant eruptions in:…
Unless you are more interested in volcanoes than is technically healthy, it is likely that you have missed out a lot on the classic Monty Python skit ‘The twin peaks of Kilimanjaro’. Most people laugh at it since they believe that there is only one peak, but for us with an un-checked interest in volcanoes,…
