GMPV
Geochemistry, Mineralogy, Petrology & Volcanology

Volcanic hazards

La Soufrière de Guadeloupe: Past Eruptions and Ongoing Activity

September 13, 2024
La Soufrière de Guadeloupe: Past Eruptions and Ongoing Activity
La Soufrière on a clear day. The fumes coming out of the volcano are from Cratère Sud Centrale (the focus of the most degassing on the volcanic dome). We can also see numerous scars decorating its flanks (source: the website Parc national de Guadeloupe).

La Soufrière de Guadeloupe is an andesitic stratovolcano located in the southern part of Basse-Terre, within the Guadeloupe archipelago (Eastern Caribbean). It towers over the towns of Sainte-Claude and Basse-Terre. Nearly 50 years ago, this region faced severe consequences from a phreatomagmatic eruption, forcing the evacuation of 80,000 people. Since then, the volcano has been regularly monitore ...[Read More]

I asked ChatGPT to write a blog about lava lakes: here’s what happened

March 8, 2023
The lava lake of Halemaʻumaʻu at Kilauea, Hawaii
The lava lake of Halemaʻumaʻu at Kilauea, Hawaiʻi (by Ivan Petrovich Vtorov - own work, CC BY-SA 3.0)

If you’ve not been living under a rock you’ve probably heard of ChatGPT, the AI text generator wowing the internet and striking fear into the heart of exam co-ordinators worldwide. I’ve been meaning to write a blog about lava lakes for a while now, ever since rewatching Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer’s excellent documentary Into the Inferno. But with deadlines looming and lab work and admin c ...[Read More]

Tambora 1815: From eruptive dynamics to the global impact of the eruption – with Jessica Kandlbauer

December 8, 2022
Panorama Mount Tambora caldera
Panorama Mount Tambora caldera

reading time: 10 minutes The Tambora 1815 eruption: a brief introduction On April 10th, 1815, the Tambora volcano, located on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia, was responsible for one of the largest eruptions in the last millennium (Stothers, 1984; Sigurdsson and Carey, 1989; Oppenheimer, 2003; Self et al., 2004; Kandlbauer et al., 2013a; Kandlbauer and Sparks, 2014). The eruption had a devastat ...[Read More]

Fagradalsfjall 2021 versus 2022: similarity and differences

October 19, 2022
Fagradalsfjall 2021 versus 2022: similarity and differences
Fagradalsfjall 2022. Photo by Emanuele Caruso

The Icelandic eruptions of 2021 and 2022 originated in the Reykjanes peninsula, characterized by the Krýsuvík-Trölladyngja system, one of the five volcanic systems present along the peninsula. This peninsula is a leaky transform fault, characterized by episodic rifts and associated volcanism. The last two years have brought about some of the most momentous volcanic eruptions in recent history. The ...[Read More]