Volcano

Mount St. Helens erupting on May 18, 1980

A volcano is a mountain where lava (hot, liquid rock) comes from a magma chamber under the ground.[1]

Most volcanoes have a volcanic crater at the top. When they are active, materials pour out of it. This includes lava, steam, gaseous compounds of sulphur, ash and broken rock pieces.

Volcanoes erupt when magma and pressure come together, and the pressure blows off the top of the solid rock, and the magma pours out.

Volcanoes are also found on planets other than Earth, like the Olympus Mons on Mars.

Types of volcanoes

The lava and pyroclastic material that comes out from volcanoes can make many different kinds of land shapes. There are two basic kinds of volcanoes.

Shield volcanoes

Shield volcanoes are built out of layers of lava from continual eruptions (without explosions). Because the lava is so fluid, it spreads out, often over a wide area. Shield volcanoes do not grow to a great height, and the layers of lava spread out to give the volcano gently sloping sides. Shield volcanoes can produce huge areas of basalt, which is usually what lava is when cooled.

Even though their sides are not very steep, shield volcanoes can be huge. Mauna Kea in Hawaii is the biggest mountain on Earth. If it is measured from its base on the floor of the sea, Mauna Kea is even taller than Mount Everest, the tallest mountain on land.[2]

Stratovolcanoes

Mount Fuji, an active stratovolcano in Japan that last erupted in 1707–08
Tavurvur, an active stratovolcano near Rabaul in Papua New Guinea

A stratovolcano, also known as a composite volcano,[3] is a tall, conical volcano. It is built up of many layers of hardened lava, tephra, pumice, and volcanic ash.

Unlike shield volcanoes, stratovolcanoes have a steep profile and periodic eruptions. The lava that flows from stratovolcanoes cools and hardens before spreading far. It is sticky, that is, it has high viscosity. The magma forming this lava is often felsic, with high-to-intermediate levels of silica, and less mafic magma. Big felsic lava flows are uncommon, but have travelled as far as Template:Convert/LoffAonDbSoffTemplate:Convert/test/Aon.[2][4]

Two famous stratovolcanoes are Japan's Mount Fuji, and Vesuvius. Both have big bases and steep sides that get steeper and steeper as it goes near the top. Vesuvius is famous for its destruction of the towns Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD, killing thousands.

Caldera

A caldera is what is left when a huge stratovolcano blows its top off. It leaves a crater where the top of the volcano was before. Krakatoa, best known for its catastrophic eruption in 1883, is much smaller now.[2]

How volcanoes are formed

Parts of a volcano:
1. Large magma chamber
2. Bedrock
3. Conduit (pipe)
4. Base
5. Sill
6. Branch pipe
7. Layers of ash emitted by the volcano
8. Flank
9. Layers of lava emitted by the volcano
10. Throat
11. Parasitic cone
12. Lava flow
13. Vent
14. Crater
15. Ash cloud

There are two main processes.

Volcanoes are made when two tectonic plates come together. When these two plates meet, one of them (usually the oceanic plate) goes under the continental plate. This is the process of subduction. Afterwards, it melts and makes magma (inside the magma chamber), and the pressure builds up until the magma bursts through the Earth's crust.

The second way is when a tectonic plate moves over a hot spot in the Earth's crust. The hot spot works its way through the crust until it breaks through. The caldera of Yellowstone Park was formed in that way; so were the Hawaiian Islands.

Classification

Edinburgh Castle on the site of an extinct volcano, c. 1581

A traditional way to classify or identify volcanoes is by its pattern of eruptions. Those volcanoes which may erupt again at any time are called active. Those that are now quiet called dormant (inactive). Those volcanos which have not erupted in historical times are called extinct.

Active

Main page: List of active volcanos

An active volcano is currently erupting, or it has erupted in the last 10,000 years. An example of an active volcano is Mount St. Helens in the United States (US).[5]

Dormant

A dormant volcano is "sleeping," but it could awaken in the future. Mount Rainier in the United States is considered dormant.[5]

Extinct

An extinct volcano has not erupted in the past 10,000 years.[5] Edinburgh Castle in Scotland is located atop an extinct volcano.[6]

Select table

Largest volcano on Earth

The Earth's largest volcano has been discovered.[7][8] It is 2 km below the sea on an underwater plateau known as the Shatsky Rise. This is about 1,600 km east of Japan. The previous record-holder, Mauna Loa in Hawaii, is still the largest volcano on land.

The 310,000 km2 (119,000 sq mi) volcano, Tamu Massif, is comparable in size to Mars' vast Olympus Mons volcano, which is the largest in the Solar System. It was formed about 145 million years ago when massive lava flows erupted from the centre of the volcano to form a broad, shield-like feature. That suggests the volcano produced a flood basalt eruption.

The Tamu Massif extends some 30 km (18 miles) into the Earth's crust. The researchers doubted the submerged volcano's peak ever rose above sea level during its lifetime and say it is unlikely to erupt again.

"The bottom line is that we think that Tamu Massif was built in a short (geologically speaking) time of one to several million years and it has been extinct since," co-author William Sager, of the University of Houston told the AFP news agency.
"There were lots of oceanic plateaus (that) erupted during the Cretaceous period (145-65 million years ago) but we don't see them since. Scientists would like to know why... The biggest oceanic plateau is Ontong Java plateau, near the equator in the Pacific, east of the Solomon Islands. It is much bigger than Tamu – it's the size of France".[7]
  • List of volcanos

References

  1. ↑ The plural of volcano can be either volcanos or volcanoes. Both are equally correct, and it is not a matter of British vs US spelling. Oxford English Dictionary. Spelling in any particular Simple page tries to be consistent.
  2. 1 2 3 Earth Science. Austin, Texas: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 2001. ISBN 0-03-055667-8.
  3. ↑ Principal types of volcanoes. USGS
  4. ↑ "Garibaldi volcanic belt: Garibaldi Lake volcanic field". Catalogue of Canadian volcanoes. Geological Survey of Canada. 2009-04-01. http://wayback.archive.org/web/20090626082839/http://gsc.nrcan.gc.ca/volcanoes/cat/feature_garibaldi_e.php. Retrieved 2010-06-27.
  5. 1 2 3 Ball, Jessica (September 8, 2010). "Voices: Dead or alive ... or neither? Why a dormant volcano is not a dead one". Earth Magazine. http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/voices-dead-or-alive-or-neither-why-dormant-volcano-not-dead-one. Retrieved 14 August 2012.
  6. ↑ University of Edinburgh, "Holyrood Park Geology"; retrieved 2012-8-2.
  7. 1 2 World's largest volcano discovered beneath Pacific. BBC Science & Environment.
  8. ↑ Witze, Alexandra 2013. Underwater volcano is Earth's biggest: Tamu Massif rivals the size of Olympus Mons on Mars.

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