Tag Archives: Wadati-Benioff zone

Famous Eruptions, Indonesia

Krakatau, Sunda Strait, Indonesia: 1883 Eruption & 2018 Tsunami

Good Afternoon!

Krakatau’s VEI 6 eruption of 1883 is the next in our series of famous eruptions.  We have also included a summary of birth of Anak Krakatau from the caldera, and the December 2018 cone collapse and resulting tsunami.

The 1883 eruption is not only famous for the catastrophic destruction of Krakatau Island, pyroclastic flows, global cooling, devastating tsunamis and a death toll of between 36,164 to 120,000 people, but it is also the first major eruption to have been reported globally by telegraph. A typo in the telegraph led to the west calling the volcano Krakatoa.

The 2018 eruption, cone collapse and tsunami are well-documented by various sources. Our go-to resource here was primarily GVP.

Fig 1: Lithograph: Parker & Coward, Britain. 1888. Public Domain

Geological Setting

Katakatau lies to the west of the Sunda Strait between Sumatra and Java.  It is the site of a much larger 7 km wide caldera which may have been formed during eruptions in 416 AD or 535 AD.  The edges of the caldera are marked by Verlaten and Lang Islands.

Before the 1883 eruption, Krakatau was a 9 km long verdant, wooded island formed from three volcanoes, Rakata, Danan and Perbuwatan in the caldera.  Another small island in the group was Polish Hat.  The islands were uninhabited but used by local fishermen, woodcutters and the Dutch and British navies.

Fig 2: Map by ChrisDHDR showing Krakatau Island before the eruption and the site of Anak Krakatau, Public Domain

Eruptive History

GVP records 56 known Holocene eruptive periods for Krakatau, of which only 10 precede the 1883 eruption.  The evidence for the 10 is historical observations from 250 AD to 1684, so perhaps earlier activity has been lost under the debris from more recent events. Activity after 1883 relates to building of Anak Krakatau.

The 535 AD eruption of Krakatau may have caused the volcanic aerosol veil that dimmed the Sun (filtered out sunlight) for eighteen months, causing crop failures, cooling and hiding Canopus, a bright star used by Chinese astronomers to mark the seasons – more likely if the eruption was a large caldera forming event. The other contender (preferred by some) is the 408 AD – 536 AD Tierra Blanca Joven eruption of Ilopango, El Salvador. On the other hand, why exclude one? Both may have contributed in some way.

Krakatau’s lavas are typical of a subduction zone: andesite, basaltic andesite, dacite, trachyte and trachydacite; and, also basalt and picro basalt.  The last mentioned indicates that there may be more rapid magma ascent through extensional faulting in the area.

The 1883 Eruption: 100 Days of Activity

The Intro

The only known precursors to the 1883 eruptions are a large earthquake on 1 September 1880 followed by a period of increasing seismicity.  Unfortunately, the area is seismically very active, being near the convergent margin between the Sunda Plate and the descending Indo-Australian Plate so, without modern instrumentation, there was insufficient information to interpret escalating events.

On the 20 May 1883 eruptive activity started at the Perbuwatan crater with series of loud explosions audible 150 km away.  Light ashfall covered the area and a column of steam was visible.  Activity continued for a few days then calmed down enough for a party to charter a boat to the island on 27 May 1883; they were the only witnesses to the Perbuwatan crater, then about 1 km in diameter, 50 m deep, with a small pit generating a steam column and small explosions every 5 to 10 minutes.  By the end of June 1883, the summit of Perbuwatan had been destroyed and a second eruption column was visible at the centre of the island.

Captain Ferzenaar, a surveyor for the Dutch government, collecting ash samples on 11 August 1883, found a thick covering of tephra, all vegetation stripped bar a few tree trunks; three active eruption columns (one at Perbuwatan and the other two near the centre of the island); and, at least eleven other sites with some activity.  However, upwind of the eruption, he was unable to see more beyond the steam and ash.

The Cataclysmic Eruption

The main event occurred over 26 and 27 August 1883. There were very few survivors so it took while for Dutch investigators, led by Rogier D.M. Verbeek, a mining engineer and geologist, and British investigators from the Royal Society to reconstruct the events.  Their information came from various sources, including ships caught in the Sunda Strait, pressure gauges at the Batavia gasworks on Java, Dutch officials living in Batavia and Buitenzorg, and requests for information from the Royal Society for data further afield, including one printed in The Times.

Three days before 26 August, there had been a marked increase in activity on the island.  By 13: 00 on 26 August explosions were loud enough to be heard 150 km away.  By 14:00 a 25 km high black eruption column was visible.  By 17:00 activity was audible throughout Java and pumice was raining down on vessels in the Strait.  By 19:00 a Plinian eruption column with intense volcanic lightening was witnessed. Several ships were among those caught up in the eruption, one of which, the Charles Bal, trapped by poor visibility had to sail within sight of  the volcano to keep its bearings amid hot ash fall, volcanic gases, lightening and St Elmo’s Fires (static electricity which lit up the mastheads).

The eruption escalated on 27 August with large explosions at 05:30, 06:44, 10:02 and 10:52 in the morning (local time).  The noise from these woke people 3,224 km away in Australia; and, further away at a distance of 4,811 km, it was confused with gunfire.  Atmospheric pressure changes were detected globally.  These explosions generated a 40 km high Plinian eruption column that cut out the sun for up to two days in the vicinity; further away in Batavia, full loss of light lasted for just over an hour and a half.  There is some debate on what caused the large explosions, including the possibility of sea water reaching either the magma chamber or ascending hot magma.  

Pyroclastic density currents (PDCs) made it to southern Sumatra, killing 2,000 people. The inhabited islands of Sebesi and Sebuku between Krakatau and Sumatra were devastated, with no survivors. Hot ash from the PDCs burned people as far away as Kalimbang, Sumatra.

The tsunamis caused the most of the remaining fatalities (estimates of the total number of fatalities vary from c. 36,000 to 120,000).  A series of tsunamis devasted the shores of the Sunda Strait; waves reached a height of 25m on the coast of Sumatra and 40m on Java. The town of Anjer was washed away. The largest tsunami wave at Batavia was detected at 12:36 on 27 August.  The waves reached as far as Auckland, New Zealand.  The tsunamis may have been caused by displacement of large amounts of seawater from the rapid deposit of ash in the caldera form discrete explosions, collapse of the eruption columns or edifice collapse.  As you will see later, the edifice failure of Anak Krakatau in December 2018 caused a catastrophic tsunami.

The eruption calmed down after the four large explosions, with some outbreaks of minor activity, to be quiet after 28 August 1883.

The Immediate Aftermath

Two thirds of Krakatau Island had disappeared – either blown apart by the eruption or sunk as part of the creation of a 300m deep caldera; only the southern section of Rakata remained.  Pumice and a small rock were all that remained of the northern part of the island.   

20 km3 of dacite pyroclastic material had been erupted as tephra, pyroclastic density currents and the rest deposited into the sea and on surrounding islands.  Deposits enlarged Verlaten and Lang Islands and two new islands were formed: Steers and Calmeyer.  Polish Hat, however, had disappeared.  Steers and Calmeyer were later eroded by sea water.

The 40 km high eruption column had reached into the stratosphere, where ash was spread round the globe, initially in the tropics but then migrating northwards and southwards, lingering for a couple of weeks.  Aerosols filtered sunlight resulting in vivid sunsets; the sun is reported as appearing as green or blue, depending on its angle in the sky.  Filtering of the sunlight caused global cooling probably in the order of 0.34°C in 1884.

The Birth, Collapse and Regrowth of Anak Krakatau

Krakatau has remained active with over 40 eruptive episodes since the 1883 eruption. Anak Krakatau (Child of Krakatau) emerged in 1927 from the caldera and had reached a height of 338m by 2018, only to lose a large part of the new cone in December 2018 when a relatively small eruptive episode (VEI 3), which started in June 2018, caused edifice failure.  The edifice collapse was preceded by an eruption at 21:03.  Øystein Lund Andersen, a photographer, recorded that by 21:05 a dark plume obscured the volcano and earlier incandescence.  At 21:27 the first tsunami wave hit the shore, travelling 15m inland; at 21:31 a second much larger wave followed.

Two thirds of Anak Krakatau had been destroyed. The tsunamis killed 437 people, injured 31,943, displaced a further 16,198 and damaged 186 miles of the shore line in Sumatra and Java.  Ash and gases cleared Kecil Island and a large part of Anak Krakatau, itself, of vegetation.  

This edifice collapse had been predicted.  Volcanologists from the University of Oregon had noted in January 2012 that the cone, formed on a steep slope of the 1883 caldera, was vulnerable to edifice collapse, especially on the western side.

The eruptive activity has continued, initially underwater, producing Surtseyan activity.  Cone rebuilding is continuing with both submarine and subaerial activity.  Recently, there was a small magmatic eruption in April 2020, producing two ash columns that reached 14 km and 11 km height and lava fountains.

 Recent Seismicity

Volcanism in the area is driven by the subduction of the Indo-Australian Plate under the Sunda Plate.  The Sunda Strait is seismically very active, possibly because it is accommodating the change in direction between the northern and eastern arms of the plate boundary.  Krakatau, itself, lies in the bend of the Arc above the Wadati-Benioff zone. 

We looked at the earthquakes in the region 8.67°S 101.00°E to 3.94°S 110.09°E for the period 1971 to 14 July 2020; this area includes the southern end of Sumatra, the Sunda Strait and the western end of Java.  We downloaded the earthquake data from IRIS’s earthquake browser. The download comprised mostly earthquakes with magnitude over 4.0; smaller volcanic / tectonic earthquakes were not included in the data set.

Fig 3: Density plot and depth plot of earthquakes between 1971 and 14 July 2020 by the author.  Green dots denote earthquakes with magnitude below 4.5, yellow circles, earthquakes between 4.5 and 6.0 and red stars, earthquakes over 6.0. © Copyright remains with the author; all rights reserved, 2020.

Our plots show the subduction zone in the curve of the Sunda Volcanic Arc, with more intense seismic activity in the northern arm of the arc. The intense areas of activity in the northern arm starts in 2000, preceding the 2004 Banda Aceh earthquake, which is north of the area in our plot, and continuing for a few years afterwards.

The Armchair Volcanologist

7 August 2020

© Copyright remains with the author; all rights reserved, 2020.

Sources and Further Research

“Volcanoes”, Second edition, Peter Francis and Clive Oppenheimer, Oxford University Press, 2004

“Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis”, David Rothery, Teach Yourself, 2010

Smithsonian Institution Global Volcanism Program, Krakatau: https://volcano.si.edu/volcano.cfm?vn=262000

 Krakatoa, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa

Anak Krakatoa, Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anak_Krakatoa

Raw earthquake data downloaded from IRIS http://ds.iris.edu/ieb/

Earthquake plots are the author’s own.

Famous Eruptions, Indonesia

Tambora 1815

This is the first of out famous eruptions series.  Why not start with one of the largest?

Fig 1: Tambora’s caldera by Tisquesusa, 2017; published under CC BY 4.0

Tambora produced one of the largest known eruptions in recorded history with a climate impacting VEI 7 and possibly the largest Holocene eruption (other contenders for a VEI 7 being Kurile Lake, 6440 BC, Mazama, 5700 BC, Kikai Caldera, 4300 BC, Cerro Blanco, 2300 BC, Thera (Santorini), 1620 BC, Taupo, 180 AD, Baekdu, 946 AD, and Samalas (Rinjani), 1257 ).

 Tambora’s once proud 4,300 m stratovolcano lost around a third of its height and acquired a 1 km deep, 6 km wide caldera over the space of a few days in April 1815.  Sumbawa and the surrounding islands were devastated. Climate abnormalities (cooling and severe storms) were noted round the northern hemisphere along with crop failure and famine.  Tambora is accredited as the cause of the 1816 “year without a summer”. The eruption released 50 km3 of magma, 150 km3 of tephra, 80 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide and 18 mega tonnes of fluorine, along with water vapour and other aerosols.

The eruption was chronicled by local eye witnesses.  However, the then lieutenant governor of Java, Sir Stamford Raffles, keen to develop trade in the area, was not so keen to broadcast it further afield to potential investors; outside the region, the eruption went largely unnoticed by the West, already distracted by the Napoleonic wars.

Geological Setting

Before the eruption, Sumbawa Island was a pleasant prosperous island, trading mung beans, corn, rice, coffee, pepper, cotton, wood and horses.  Despite a wealth of natural resources, the people to farm them were in short supply so there was also a large slave trade and piracy.

Tambora occupies the entire Sanggar Peninsula on Sumbawa Island in the Sunda Arc of the Indonesian Archipelago.  Here the Australian Plate subducts beneath the Sunda Plate at a convergence rate of 7.8 cm per year.  Plotting the earthquakes in the region for 1972 to date clearly shows the Wadati-Benioff zone, with volcanoes sitting around 70km above the descending plate. 

Fig 2: Scatter plot of the earthquakes showing the subduction zone (Wadati-Benioff zone) where the Australian Plate meets the Sunda Plate by the author.  Green dots represent earthquakes < 5M, yellow circles, 5M to 6M, red stars, >6M, blue triangles, some volcanoes. © All rights reserved, 2020

Tambora is a 60 km wide stratovolcano with trachybasalt and trachyandesite lavas.  She formed a caldera c.43,000 years ago which was in-filled by Pleistocene lava flows.  During the Holocene her eruptions have been explosive: three eruptions in the Holocene occurred before the 1815 event, identified by radiocarbon dating, 740 AD, 3050 BC, and 3910 BC; three further smaller eruptions have been observed since the 1815 event, 1819 VEI 2, 1880 VEI 2 and 1967 VEI 0, which extruded lava domes and small lava flows on the caldera floor.

1815 eruption

Tambora had been dormant for over a thousand years; magma cooling and fractional crystallisation had been occurring along with the exsolving of high-pressure magma; over pressurisation was happening. Tambora awoke in 1812 with minor activity during the period 1812 to 1815 while magma ascended from the reservoir c.4 km below the edifice. 

The 1815 eruption proper started with a short Plinian eruption on 5 April 1815 of trachyandesite, lasting two hours, producing a 33 km eruption column; the explosions were heard as far away as Sumatra and were confused with gun fire. Following this, between 5 April and 10 April, there was a relatively low level of activity. 

On the evening of 10 April, a second short Plinian eruption occurred, lasting three hours, producing a 44 km eruption column.  Pumice rained down on local villages for 2 hours.  Volcanic winds destroyed trees and property.  The eruption column collapsed as the vent was eroded.  Pyroclastic density currents (PDCs) raged over the next three to four days, creating phoenix ash clouds, covering the area in ash and destroying villages, along with inhabitants.  During this phase the volcano, no longer supported by magma, subsided, creating the current caldera.

Tsunamis were generated when the PDCs reached the sea.  Sanggar was engulfed in a four-metre high tsunami at around 10 pm on 10 April; this tsunami reached Java a couple of hours later with a height of two metres. 

Explosions were heard during the night of 10 to 11 April up to 2,600 km away.  Locations within a 600km radius suffered darkness for a couple of days and a chilling of the atmosphere while sunlight was blocked. 

Seven or more ignimbrite layers were deposited during the second phase of the eruption.  Only 2.6 km3 of deposits remain on dry land; the heavier ejecta ended up in the sea and lighter aerosols were scattered round the globe.  Pumice rafts up to 5 km wide and trees trunks littered the Flores Sea, providing a hazard for shipping for several months.

Eruptive activity continued intermittently up to August 1819. 

Local and global impact of the eruption

Sumbawa was stripped of its vegetation. The death toll in Sumbawa and neighbouring Lombok was in the order of 60,000, 10,000 from the eruption itself with the remainder from disease and famine from polluted water and loss of crops and livestock.  Children were sold into slavery in order for them to survive or apparently killed to avoid a slow death from starvation or worse. 

The effects were also global.  The volcano had lobbed 50 km3 of matter plus gases into the stratosphere.  Larger particles fell back to Earth but smaller aerosols hung around for three years causing adverse weather phenomena (e.g. storms), global cooling, failed harvests, famine and disease in much of the northern hemisphere.

The global effects were exacerbated, according to ice-core sampling, by another large catastrophic eruption in 1809.  The source for the 1809 has yet to be identified; the volcano and eye witnesses may not have survived the eruption.  However, the 1809 and 1815 eruptions together caused a little ice age.

Can this happen again?

VEI 7 eruptions are rare.  As mentioned earlier, there are currently only eight other contenders in the Holocene. That is not to say they won’t happen again in the future. 

My guess is that to get another large event, not only do you need a large magma source and a build-up of pressure but also an element of edifice failure.  The largest part of the Tambora eruption in terms of magma output was while the PDCs were in full swing; these occurred as or after the vent eroded.  We will see in the accounts of other eruptions, there was some edifice failure.

In the meantime, Mount Tambora and her Indonesian sisters are well-monitored.

The Armchair Volcanologist

6 July 2020 (updated 23/08/2020 & 25/08/2020 to include more potential VEI 7s (the list is getting longer!)

© Copyright remains with the author; all rights reserved, 2020

Sources and Further Reading

“Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis”, David A. Rothery, Teach Yourself, 2010.

“Volcanoes”, Second Edition, Peter Francis, Clive Oppenheimer, Oxford University Press, 2004

“Tambora: The Eruption That Changed the World”, Gillen D’Arcy Wood, Princeton University Press, 2014

Mount Tambora – Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Tambora

Earthquake data from Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) Earthquake Browser: http://ds.iris.edu/ieb

Plot by the author.

Magma, Volcano Basics

The Magic of Magma

Good Afternoon!

Magma is the molten source of many of the rocks at the Earth’s surface; the others come from meteorites or other terrestrial processes.  Here, we look at how magma is generated and how it affects volcanic eruptions.   This is a long one; you may want to dip into it as a reference rather than read it all in one go, but bear with me.

Fig 1: Holuhraun on 4 September 2014 by peterhartree.  Published under CC BY-SA 2.0. Note the fire fountains, effusive lava flows and gas emissions.

There are several different types of volcanic eruption, varying from effusive to explosive.  The type is determined by the magma composition- both its silica content and its volatile (gas) content.

How is magma generated?

From our earlier post, we know that the heat required to generate magma comes from nuclear reactions at the Earth’s core.  This heat makes its way to the surface via conduction, convection and radiation.  The surface rocks are cold enough to be solid.  However, we saw that the heat from the core drives plate tectonics; it is the variations in temperature and pressure caused by plate motion, combined with changes in rock composition, that create the conditions for rocks to melt and create magma.

Effusive Continental Rifts / Ocean Ridges

Effusive eruptions (think Hawaiian eruptions such as Kilauea) tend to occur at rifts or fissures, cracks in the Earth’s crust that let magma reach the surface relatively quickly and allow gases to escape gently.  Such fissures are common at constructive plate boundaries (continental rifts or mid ocean ridges), caused by plate separation.  Magma is generated in a process called decompression melting; as the plates move apart the overlying pressure is reduced, which in turn reduces the melting temperature of the mantle.  Because magma ascends relatively rapidly there is less time for it to mix with other magma or the crust.  This magma tends to be basic basalt. 

Magma ascent at ocean ridge
Fig 2:  Magma ascending at a Mid Ocean Ridge by the author after the many examples available.  Arrows denote plate motion.  Not to scale. © All rights reserved, 2020.

More Explosive Subduction Zones

Magma may also be generated at what is called subduction zones.  Subduction zones occur where plates meet: a denser oceanic lithosphere descends beneath either a less dense continental lithosphere or other oceanic lithosphere. These zones were discovered by two scientists independently researching earthquakes, Hugo Benioff and Kiyoo Wadati. Earthquake foci delineate the descending slab; this zone may be referred to as the Wadati-Benioff zone.   Magma is created from the descending slab by a process called hydration melting: as the slab descends water is squeezed out which mixes with the overlying asthenosphere, lowering its melting temperature.  Hydration melting occurs between 50 km to 200 km, with volcanoes accumulating at around 70 km above the descending slab.  

Magma mixes with the asthenosphere and the crust which increases its silica content. Partial melting of the mantle results in basalts (<52% silica); partial melting of the descending ocean crust provides andesites (52% to 65% silica); and, partial melting of the continental crust gives rhyolites (> 65% silica).  Increasing the silica content of the magma increases its viscosity and the explosivity of eruptions.

These plate boundaries are called destructive boundaries; it is believed that the descending plate is destroyed in the process. 

Fig 3:  Magma generation at a subduction zone by the author, after the many sources available.  Large arrow denotes plate motion; stars, the site of hydration melting; and, the smaller arrow, magma ascent.  The accretionary wedge is rock scraped off as the plates meet. Earthquake foci, not shown, would indicate the path of the descending plate. Not to scale. © All rights reserved, 2020.

Obduction

There is another process where plates meet called obduction; one plate rides over the other.  It is mentioned because obduction revealed the origins of oceanic crust.  Ophiolites, the remnants of old oceanic crust, show that this crust is made up of peridotites from the mantle overlain by old magma chambers, sheet dyke complexes, pillow lavas and sediments.  The magma was sourced from partial melting of the peridotite.  Sheet dyke complexes are complexes of vertical magma intrusions where magma has filled gaps caused by extension from plate separation.  Pillow lavas occur when basalt is erupted underwater.

Magma Evolution

We know that not all magma is basic basalt: there are others, including andesite and rhyolite.  These are formed from basalt by a process called magma evolution.

Magma rises slowly under its natural buoyancy, being around 10% less dense than the surrounding rock.  It tends to accumulate in magma chambers / reservoirs at depths of around 5 km to 20 km below the volcano.  Magma evolves by one or more of the following:

  • Magma mixing: one batch of magma mixes with another in the magma reservoir;
  • Assimilation: the rising magma collects surrounding rock during its ascent;
  • Fractional crystallisation: as magma rises, it cools, which causes the components with higher melting points to crystallise out.

Evolution tends to increase the silicate content of the magma and increase its viscosity; the higher the viscosity, the slower magma moves.

The table below shows a comparison of rock and magma compositions for some its key elements.  The convention for magma composition is based on the oxide equivalents of the elements, presumably on the basis that oxygen does not occur on its own in rock. 

Fig 4:  Comparison of key elements in the composition of different magmas by the author after various sources.  © All rights reserved, 2020.

So how does magma get to the surface?

The short answer is plate tectonics. Distortions in the crust from plate motion either squeeze magma out via existing or new fractures, or provide a wide enough pathway for the magma to ascend.  This is why we see so many volcanoes around plate boundaries.

Eruption Style

Magma contains dissolved gases (e.g. water, carbon dioxide, sulphur, and halogens: chlorine and fluorine).  When the constraining pressure decreases, the gases are released from solution: e.g. carbon dioxide exsolves at depths of several kilometres and sulphur at around 1 km.   This is a process called degassing (think of carbon dioxide released from a fizzy drink when the cap is loosened.) These gases may be held in the magma as bubbles or it may escape via fractures in the crust to the surface.  Measuring gas emissions around volcanoes indicates whether or not new magma is close to the surface.  We have seen with Grímsvötn that Icelandic scientists have reported the presence of sulphur dioxide near the caldera rim, indicating that Grímsvötn may be heading for a new eruption.

Effusive eruptions tend to occur with the less viscous basaltic magmas from which gases can escape gently.  More explosive eruptions are caused when the gases are trapped in more viscous magma and accumulate either as foam or as bubbles; it is their rapid expansion causes an explosive eruption. If a degassing event is large enough, less viscous magmas may also produce explosive eruptions.

When gas bubbles coalesce and expand, large bubbles form which rise with the magma.  If the magma reaches the vent, the bubbles explode with the reduction in constraining pressure, throwing out chunks of lava and ash; some of the chunks can be large boulders.  If gas bubbles get trapped in the magma chamber, when the accumulated pressure is high enough, the gas is forced out as a jet strong enough to cause fire fountains from less viscous basaltic magmas or ash / shards from fractured more viscous magma.  Fire fountains are / were visible in some of Etna’s eruption, in the 2014 eruption at Holuhraun or in the 1783 eruption of Laki. Famous explosive eruptions include Pinatubo, 1991, Krakatau, 1883, and Vesuvius, 79AD,

Impact of ground water or ice

We have seen explosive eruptions from some of Iceland’s basaltic volcanoes.  Another source of volatiles is ground water (aquifers) or glaciers.  When magma gets close enough to these, the heat from the magma flashes the water to steam; the rapid expansion of the water / steam results in an explosive eruption.  If only old rock is involved, the eruption is referred to as phreatic; if new magma is involved, the eruption is referred to as phreatomagmatic.  Phreatic eruptions may be a vehicle to clear the vent / provide a pathway for new magma to reach the surface. Recent phreatic eruptions include White Island, 2019, Mount Ontake, 2014; both caused loss of life because of the unpredictable nature of this eruption type.

Future Topics

There is another important process for magma that we have not touched here: mantle plumes.  We will look at this later.

We will also look in more detail the various locations for volcanoes, including the earthquake foci plots that indicate activity (usually tectonic).  Our Icelandic posts show the influence of the Mid Atlantic Ridge; others will look at subduction zones.

We may get diverted / distracted on the way to look at current events of interest.  (Probably, no “may” about it 😉 ).

Thank you for staying with me,

The Armchair Volcanologist

1 July 2020

© Copyright remains with the author; all rights reserved, 2020

Sources and Further Reading

“Volcanoes, Earthquakes and Tsunamis”, David A. Rothery, “Teach Yourself”, 2010

“Volcanoes”, Peter Francis, Clive Oppenheimer, Oxford University Press, 2004

“Volcanoes Global Perspectives”, John P. Lockwood and Richard W. Hazlett, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010

“Wadati-Benioff zone”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wadati%E2%80%93Benioff_zone

“Igneous rock”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igneous_rock

“Magma”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magma