Eruptions

There is a video of the new Mayon eruption on YouTube, it's from the Philippine television station ABS-CBN and in the local language but the images clearly show a glowing, active lava dome at Mayon's summit and lava extending downslope from it onto the southeast flank, taking the same path as the lavas of the previous eruptions since 1993.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkqTF1_6Rmg

Posted by: Boris Behncke | December 14, 2009 1:09 PM

... and if Mayon weren't enough, also Piton de la Fournaise on the French Indian Ocean island Réunion has started a new and, as it looks, quite nice eruption, little more than one month after its extremely brief 5 November eruption.
The Institut de Physique du Globe has news (in French) and a really wonderful time-lapse video recorded by one of the webcams of the Piton de la Fournaise volcanological observatory:
http://www.ipgp.fr/pages/03030807.php

Posted by: Boris Behncke | December 14, 2009 2:38 PM

Volcanophile, I totally agree... the contrast between the two videos (Mayon and Reunion) is amazing.. ok, Mayon is a lot steeper but still. How does this work?

Posted by: bruce stout | December 14, 2009 3:36 PM

Thanks a lot for the answers...

I looked up a bit on the GVP website about Mayon.. Boris, you're definitely right, it's basaltic andesite to andesite.

This volcano looks like a sort of transition between explosive and effusive type... it's capable of producing lava flows, but also pyroclastic flows and plinian activity...

Maybe the type of effusion also depends of the temperature at which lava is erupted... Hotter, more fluid lava found its way through the dome and is now flowing down the flanks...

Does the current behavior give any clues about what the volcano is about to do? Is it about to go strombolian and produce spectacular but quite harmless activity? or can it go back to kaboom-mode and go plinian (or worse still, pelean?)

Wait and see..

Posted by: Volcanophile | December 14, 2009 4:00 PM

Volcanophile: Mayon might well go into, err, 'kaboom mode', since several eruptive episodes have started with lava flows, progressing through strombolian to a final sub-Plinian spasm.
Maybe a bit like the 19th-20th Cent. Vesuvius eruptions- volatile-poor lava pours out, reducing pressure on gassy stuff lower down the conduit

At least one previous lava 'dome' at Mayon seems to have been the old crater floor pushed upwrads by rising magma beneath it, the new magma then flowing out as a lava stream from underneath the "carapace" of older rock..perhaps this one is similar?

Posted by: mike don | December 14, 2009 4:59 PM

i got some big big news for Mayon

Mayon volcano in Philippines oozes lava; alert up

Authorities moved thousands of villagers from harm's way near the Philippines' most active volcano Tuesday after it oozed lava and shot plumes of ash, and said they probably will spend a bleak Christmas in an evacuation center.

State volcanologists raised the alert level on the cone-shaped, 8,070-foot (2,460-meter) Mayon volcano overnight to two steps below eruption after ash explosions and dark orange lava fragments glowing in the dark trickled down the mountain slope.

Nearly 50,000 people live in a five-mile (eight-kilometer) radius around the mountain, and authorities began moving thousands of them in case it erupts, Albay provincial Gov. Joey Salceda said.

The first of 20 vehicles, including army trucks, were sent to villages to take residents to schools and other temporary housing, provincial emergency management official Jukes Nunez said.

"It's 10 days before Christmas. Most likely people will be in evacuation centers, and if Mayon's activity won't ease down we will not allow them to return to their homes," Nunez said."It's difficult and sad, especially for children."

Magma had been rising at the volcano over the past two weeks and began to ooze out of its crater Monday night, but it could get worse in coming days, said Renato Solidum, head of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology.

"Now lava is trickling down, but if the ascent of magma is sustained there will be laval flows," Solidum told The Associated Press."There is also the possibility of an explosion."

Residents in the central province of Albay are used to moving away from Mayon, which spewed ash last month and prompted the evacuation of some villages.

About 30,000 people were moved when it last erupted in 2006. Typhoon-triggered mudslides near the mountain later that year buried entire villages, killing more than 1,000 people.

Mayon's most violent eruption, in 1814, killed more than 1,200 people and buried a town in mud. A 1993 eruption killed 79 people.

The Philippines lies along the Pacific"Ring of Fire," where volcanic activity and earthquakes are common. About 22 out of 37 volcanos in the archipelago are activ

from here

http://www.mymotherlode.com/news/world/709372/Mayon-volcano-in-Philippines-oozes-lava-alert-up.html

Posted by: David | December 14, 2009 11:47 PM

to Volcanophile: volcanoes do behave in very different manners indeed, and often the same volcano erupts differently each time. Mayon, which is very active and thus provides a record of numerous eruptions, is a very instructive example. In 1984, activity built up slowly - it started much the same way it's doing now - and then had its most intense phase after some two weeks. In 1993, it started with a devastating explosion and pyroclastic flow, leading to the nearly 80 deaths mentioned in David's note (11). Eruptions in 2000 and 2001 built up rapidly to strong explosive phases, whereas the latest eruption in 2006 remained relatively mild throughout (although more than 1000 people were killed in typhoon-generated lahars soon after the eruption).
A correction is due for Mount St. Helens in 1980 - it did not go full scale explosive at the start, but after six weeks of relatively small phreatic explosions, seismic activity, and very pronounced swelling of its north flank. Indeed, Chaitén is one of the few examples of a major explosive eruption that went paroxysmal right from the start. Soufrière Hills on Montserrat, on the contrary, took about two years to reach its highest levels of activity (from July 1995 to June 1997). It's all a question of how much gas is in the magma, and in particular, how much water vapor and carbon dioxide: these are the gases that drive volcano explosive. Lack of such gas was also the reason why the latest eruption of Mount St. Helens (2004-2008) was largely non-explosive.
In the case of Mayon, I believe that there we see something that we have often observed also at Etna: the conduit being essentially open all the time, each new uprise of more gas-rich magma first pushes out gas-poor magma remaining in the conduit, and that is why the onset of many Mayon eruptions is so gradual.

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