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eklemetti | April 22, 2009Mt. Baker in Washington. Image taken by John Scurlock.
Eruptions reader Robert Somerville brought to my attention the Mount Baker Volcano Research Center, a "clearinghouse for research on Mt. Baker" in Washington state. The center is a non-profit organization that is affiliated with the Geology Department at Western Washington University - and from the looks of the website, they've already done a great job in compiling a lot of information about Mt. Baker, including an excellent eruptive history of the volcano. Mt. Baker is one of the most active Cascade volcanoes, with active fumarolic…
eklemetti | January 19, 2009
One of the more impressive areas I visited while in New Zealand was the Waimangu Valley near Mt. Tarawera (above). The valley itself was created by blast explosions (phreatic explosions) during the 1886 eruption of Mt. Tarawera. These eruptions cut right down the axis of the rhyolite domes (most of which erupted ~1305 A.D.) and extended off the volcanic edifice to form the valley to the west of the volcano. In the valley, no juvenile lava was erupted, instead explosions carved out large pits that formed the Waimangu Valley and today the valley is filled with lakes and thermal features (below…
eklemetti | December 31, 2008
Yellowstone looks to be keeping everyone on their toes as we ring in 2009. The earthquake swarm reported earlier this week is continuing, with multiple events between 2-3.5 on the Richter Scale. Again, the folks monitoring the caldera - this time the Univ. of Utah - play down these events as normal for any active caldera system ... and they're very likely right. However, the media love to bring up the "supervolcano" angle and we're even getting expert opinion from (wait for it) Garrison Keillor!. Â The earthquakes are just normal earthquakes so far - none of the dreaded/anticipated harmonic…
eklemetti | June 16, 2008
I am always amazed by the number of volcanoes that show signs of activity every year that I have never heard of before. Case in point is this report of activity near Mr. Kurikoma, on the island of Honshu in Japan. The last known eruptions at Kurikoma were back in 1950, and they seem to be water-magma interactions that produce phreatic explosions - and even beyond this 1950 eruption, there isn't much information about the eruptive history at Kurikoma.
However, if you look at the report, the activity is actually rather far from the summit of Kurikoma - a full 7 km to the southwest. There are…