Ethiopia
milhayser | August 12, 2013Water may be the most abundant molecule on the surface of the Earth, but more than 99% of it is frozen, underground, or too salty to drink. Only .007% of the planet's water runs in rivers and lakes, yet this precious amount sustains massive populations worldwide. Agricultural societies have long gone to war over water, and as the Earth's population balloons toward 10 billion, global warming destabilizes weather patterns, and pollution sullies what little is left to count on, the conflicts will only get worse. On Significant Figures, Peter Gleick traces Syria's civil war in part to "drought…
pgleick | June 2, 2013The Nile River – river of legend – is not just a river in Egypt. It is the lifeblood of 11 different African nations and the longest river in the world, extending over 6,500 kilometers long and draining a watershed of over 3 million square kilometers. The eleven nations that share the Nile are Egypt, Ethiopia, the Sudan and South Sudan, Kenya, Eritrea, the DR of Congo, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, and Rwanda.
The river is really two major rivers: the White Nile and the Blue Nile, which meet near Khartoum and become the mainstem of the Nile, flowing north to Egypt and the Mediterranean. The…
tsmith | August 28, 2012Mahabouba*, age 14, was sold into a marriage as a second wife to a man 50 almost years her senior. Raped and beaten repeatedly, she ended up pregnant, finally succeeding in running away 7 months into her pregnancy. Fleeing to the nearby town, she found that the people there threatened to return her to her husband, so she ran back to her native village in Ethiopia. However, her immediate family no longer lived there. An uncle eventually took pity on her and provided her with housing. When Mahabouba went into labor, lacking resources, she tried to deliver her baby herself. Her pelvis was still…
laelaps | June 23, 2010
The skeletons of Lucy (left) and Kadanuumuu (right). Both belong to the early human species Australopithecus afarensis. (Images not to scale.)
I never fully appreciated how small Lucy was until I saw her bones for myself. Photographs and restorations of her and her kin within the species Australopithecus afarensis had never really given me a proper sense of scale, and when I looked over her incomplete skeleton - formally known as specimen A.L. 288-1 - I was struck by her diminutive proportions. In life she would have only been about three and a half feet tall. Her physical stature seemed…
laelaps | May 27, 2010
The skull of Nyctereutes lockwoodi as seen from the side and above. From Geraads et al, 2010.
In 2006 paleoanthropologists working in Ethiopia made a spectacular announcement - they had found the well-preserved remains of a juvenile Australopithecus afarensis, one of our prehistoric hominin relatives. Quickly dubbed "Lucy's baby" this 3.4 million year old specimen graced the cover of Nature and numerous news reports, yet its description represents only a fraction of the paleontological work being done in the area. Many other fossil animals have been found along the banks of the Awash, too…
eklemetti | March 15, 2010The latest in my Volcano Profiles series, this one on Erta Ale in Ethiopia.
The summit crater at Erta Ale in 1994
Location: The Afar region of Ethiopia.
Height: 613 m / 2,011 feet
Tectonic setting: Erta Ale (meaning "smoking mountain") is part of the East African Rift, where the African Continent is tearing apart along a seam that runs from the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden (two other arms of the rift themselves) south through eastern Africa. Many of the large lakes of eastern Africa such as Lakes Albert, Tanganyika, Nyasa and Kariba fill rift valleys created by the cracking of the continental plate…
eklemetti | March 10, 2010Did I mention its a busy week?
The lava lake at Erta'Ale in 2008. Image courtesy of Stromboli Online.
Our Icelandic saga continues, with more earthquakes and more speculation/information on the parts of Eruptions readers. Keep up the discussion - I'll be fascinated to see who turns out to get closest to what actually happens, prediction-wise. The seismicity has quieted somewhat again in the last 12 hours, so we wait eagerly to see what comes next. Remember, Iceland is the land where volcanoes helped change history, so it is always fun to talk Icelandic volcanism.
The NASA Earth Observatory…
eklemetti | December 31, 20092009 is over! If you missed the Volcanic Year in Review, check out my summary of the volcanic events that captivated many of us over the past year. However, only one event will get the coveted 2009 Pliny for Volcanic Event of the Year. A lot of you wrote in with votes and comments - I thank you - and a number of events stood out in your mind. Here we go:
Honorable mention
A few volcanic events got multiple votes:
- Soufriere Hills on Montserrat.
- Mando Hararo in Ethiopia.
- Chaiten, Chile and the new research on the eruption.
- The earthquakes in western Saudi Arabia under the Harrat…
eklemetti | December 31, 2009Here 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…
eklemetti | November 5, 2009 Lava flows from the 2005 Mando Hararo eruption in Ethiopia.
Alright, I had been attempting to ignore this story because it was, well, a little uninteresting at first, but it apparently has legs so I will tackle it.
Slashdot has a post proclaiming:
'Volcanic activity may split the African continent in two, creating a new ocean, say experts. This is due to a recent geological crack which has appeared in northeastern Ethiopia.'
OK. Where do I start?
This is based on a recent study published in Geophysical Research Lettersthat found that the recent volcanism in Ethiopia is related to the active…
eklemetti | August 23, 2009Some brief notes before I dive headlong into the exciting world of faculty orientation!
A small steam plume coming from Turrialba in Costa Rica. Photo taken in August 2007.
There are some preliminary reports of the state of wildlife (and everything) around Kasatochi Island in the Aleutians from the US F&W and USGS team that headed to check out how the island has recovered since last year's eruption. The shoreline has been radically transformed by the ash and although some seabirds have made attempts to nest in the loose ash, it doesn't seem to have been very successful. However, not…
eklemetti | July 20, 2009Starting today and going until early August, you might see fewer posts on Eruptions than you're accustomed. This is because I'm in the process of moving to Ohio to get set up to start my new job as an assistant professor at Denison University. I'm excited about the move, but as you can imagine, trying to pull up stakes in California and trek two-thirds of the way across the continent will take up a lot of my time. I will miss the easy access to volcanoes here on the Left Coast, but I am excited to get (mostly) permanent employment, set up my own lab and to be able to teach geology again!…
eklemetti | July 15, 2009Your weekly dose of volcanism from the USGS/Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program.
Highlights (not counting Mayon), include:
The activity at Mando Hararo in Ethiopia appears to be a fissure eruption. Ground observations saw a 4-5 kilometers / ~2.5-3 mile fissure with new predominantly 'a'a lava flows that were 2-3 m thick ... the fissure was lined with scoria ramparts 30-50 m high. They did not see any active lava, though.
As some Eruptions readers have pointed out from the OMI SO2 maps, Sarychev Peak (Russia) is still producing gas-and-steam (with some ash) plumes, mostly drifting off to the…
eklemetti | July 8, 2009All the volcano news that is fit to print, all thanks to the USGS/Smithsonian GVP!
Highlights (not include Manda Hararo, Kilauea and Mayon) include
San Miguel in El Salvador has been experiencing increased seismicity. The last time the volcano erupted was in 2002.
A pilot spotted a ~10,000 foot / 3 km ash plume emanating from Anak Krakatau in Indonesia.
Another ash plume, this time at Ubinas, Peru, was spotted by pilots rising to ~6.7-9.1 km / 20-30,000 feet.
Explosions were heard from Suwanose-jima in Japan, but no associated ash plumes were spotted.
It sounds like a lava dome has been…
eklemetti | July 2, 2009Three days ago, I received an email from Eruptions reader Gijs de Reijke who was curious about something he noticed in the daily OMI SO2 images:
OMI sulfur dioxide map over Ethiopia for June 30, 2009.
Now, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it other than the fact that there was an awful lot of sulfur dioxide in the vicinity of Addis Ababa, which seemed odd. If we look at a map of the active volcanoes in Ethiopia (below), a majority of the ones we might suspect if the SO2 was volcano are to the north (Erte Ale, Dallafilla), but this patch is smack-dab in the middle of the country, looking…
eklemetti | November 6, 2008
Sounds like we're beginning to get a better idea of what is erupting in Ethiopia. Ghezahegn Yirgu, a geologist at Addis Ababa University, reports that Dalla Filla Dalaffilla Volcano is the source of the eruption. Again, the eruption is being characterized as "lava flows" rather than an explosive eruption, which may be surprising considering the amount of volcanic gases being released (see Boris Bechnke's highly useful comment). However, some mostly effusive eruptions have released a lot of volcanic gases in the past - see Laki, Iceland in 1783 - so a preponderance of flows at Dalla Filla…