At one time, Portugal ruled the world. Its explorers discovered the Cape of Good Hope, created colonies around the Indian Ocean, reached China and Japan, founded the city of Nagasaki, and claimed much of South America. The glory days of the Portuguese empire lasted from 1415 to 1750, and left a rich heritage in Portugal.…
This is a reposted article from December 3, 2011. I have always had a love of the beauty of the Antarctic. When I discovered that a cousin of my grandfather had joined Shackleton’s Trans-Antarctic expeditionof 1914 to 1917 as the official photographer, this love morphed into an enduring interest in the early explorations of the…
It is a bit surprising that I have never gotten around to writing a complete guide of Icelandic volcanoes in view of how much I have written about them. Obviously this can’t be a complete write up for all of the volcanoes; instead it will be a list of the volcanoes with a short part…
This is a reposted article from November 21, 2011 As a biologist I feel I really must reply to the Blog on behalf of the sheep. I don’t know how many biologists read these Volcanic blogs and I wonder if geologists and physicists have a true concept of the science of Biology. I decided to…
From time to time when we discuss our beloved volcanoes, we get a mild-mannered enquiry – ”Excuse me, but what’s effusive? And that cryptodome you are all speaking of, what is that?” I thought I’d take the time to jot down a few notes trying to explain what is meant by the various types and…
The Norwegian island of Jan Mayen is situated north of Iceland. It might be the only place on earth where no one yet has bothered to find anything valuable. Except for a short stint in the early twentieth century when Norwegian trappers hunted polar bears and blue fox. Jan Mayen services as a combined polar…
In the previous part we learned that Grimsvötn indeed is able to produce large scale eruptions as we looked closer into the Saksunarvatn tephras. The first part can be found by following the link below. http://www.volcanocafe.org/grimsvotn-the-saksunarvatn-tephras/ This time we will look into what this new information might mean for the future eruptions of Grimsvötn. But…
Sometimes our readers send in questions to us that literally sends the writers into a frenzy of volcanic exploration. This week’s question was about if the area between Fort Rock and Chemult in Oregon is indeed a large caldera. The area is situated south of the eastward Cascade volcanic range south of Newberry (Paulina Peak),…
Few of our readers have missed the anomalous M6.2 earthquake that occured 20 km WNW of the Aniakchak Caldera. In this article we will go through the details of the earthquake and the possible effects of the main-shock and the series of after-shocks. According to the Alaska Earthquake Center the waveform of the initial 6.2…
This is a repost of an article from October 28, 2013. The Caribou was standing on the plains 30 kilometers away from the mountain; it had not fled the roaring mountain more than that. After all, the ash was driven by the fierce wind to the north, and where it stood to the west in…