I did an excellent job of forgetting my notes from GSA 2009, so no wrap up on the meeting until tomorrow, but we do have some new volcano news to digest:
The crater of El Reventador in Ecuador in an undated photo.
- Ecuadorian officials have called for evacuations around El Reventador. The Ecuadorian Geophysics Institute says that the volcano's "activities were measured at a level considered high, with permanent seismic signals indicating explosions while the southern side of the volcano crater could be seen as incandescent.". Three provinces near the volcano were put on alert
evacuatedas a precaution as activity at the volcano increases (in spanish). - Gaua in Vanuatu continues to rumble as well. The Geohazards Observatory in Vanuatu have warned residents of the island that lahars could be produced if volcanic material mixes with the lake waters from the crater lake on Gaua. They also raised the alert level to two (on a scale of five). Mount Garat, part of the caldera system, has been producing ash and sulfur odors for the past month. Local officials have also submitted a plan for evacuation if the eruption worsens.
- Mayon in the Philippines has also shown signs it might be headed for a larger eruption - although it didn't stop people from doing the Mayon Trail Run, a 21-km run near the volcano. Most troubling, volcanowise, is the increase in seismicity and sulfur dioxide emissions. In the meantime, a non-eruption-triggered lahar came down the slopes of the volcano last week.
- After Cleveland's brief outburst a few weeks ago, the volcano has settled back down again. The Alert Level as Cleveland was reduced from Yellow/Watch after nothing came after the explosion on October 2.
- The NASA Earth Observatory posted another stunner of an image, this time of Soufriere Hills at Montserrat. The volcano continues to erupt after 10 months of quiet and in this image taken from the ISS, you can clearly see the ash-and-steam plume drifting to the northwest, along with the big volcaniclastic debris fans on the north and west sides of the island.
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More like this
Somehow I haven't posted a bunch of interesting items collected over the last few weeks, so I need to catch up. A pre-emptive hat tip to everyone who has sent me links or notes that might seem familiar in this post.
Tungurahua in Ecuador erupting in 2000.
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Undated photo of the summit area of Gaua, Vanuatu.
There was an actual eruption - or, more correctly, a continued eruption - of Gaua in Vanuatu. The current activity…
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link is broken on the ISS image...
Link fixed!
That ISS photo is awesome.
FYI... The Reventador article says that 3 provinces were put on alert about the possibility of an eruption, they have not been evacuated yet.
Thanks for catching that, G Mayberry. Fixed.
So I attempted subscribing to your RSS .xml, and it outputted a "Malformed XML" error... Can you tell me if it's me or the internet messing up?