This article began as a regular piece on Lassen Peak but quickly expanded as I discovered how incredibly complex the geology and history of the Lassen Volcanic Complex was. Unlike nearby Shasta, Lassen Peak is but a dacite lava dome, one of the largest lava domes on Earth but only one of the dozens of…
Starting today, we begin to reproduce some of the more popular posts originally published on the old site. But don’t worry! We will continue to produce new posts as and when something of interest crops up! Volcanic activity in North America is surprisingly infrequent. In spite of there being no less than 255 volcanoes or…
The August 24th eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD is the most famous and well-known volcanic eruption of all time. By now, volcanologists have pieced together the sequence of events to form a coherent and comprehensive picture and the only official dilemma is the actual date with meteorological evidence arguing a date towards the middle…
Although the 2,265 volcano-tectonic earthquakes at Planchon-Peteroa as reported yesterday by Georges Vitton (Le Chaudron de Vulcain) is perhaps the more interesting news, our readers are probably more interested in the large earthquake swarms in Tjörnes Fracture Zone. What is happening? Is it an eruption, is an eruption imminent or can an eruption be expected…
According to an article published today by journalist Kristján Kristjánsson on the Icelandic Internet news outlet Pressan, “Hekla is ready to erupt” and “tension is very high in the mountain”. The article, which is in Icelandic, goes on to quote (Professor) Páll Einarsson, the man who rightly won international acclaim in 2000 when he read…
After writing the Woolly Mammoth Guide to Icelandic Volcanism I vowed to not write about Iceland for a while. That comment bit me in the posterior rather quickly. Since the cessation of the Holuhraun eruption the central volcano Bárðarbunga has been highly seismically active. Many people have fervently believed that this has been due to…
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…