Tectonics and Structural Geology

volcano

How Lava Domes Grow: Field Observations and Thermo-Mechanical Insights from the 1979 Soufrière Eruption

Takafumi Maruishi January 8, 2026

Photographs of the Soufrière lava dome from the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program: GVP-05128.

To kick off the New Year, we have invited a guest author, Takafumi Maruishi, a researcher in the Research Division for Volcanic Disasters / Center for Volcano Research Promotion, National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience, Japan. He explains the scaling law of lava dome growth and its physical insight. Effusive eruptions—when magma reaches the surface and is extruded as ...[Read More]

Features from the Field: Dikes and Sills

Samuele Papeschi and Hannah Davies May 30, 2022

Volcanoes are everywhere along plate margins and on hot spots on the planet’s surface. Just in the past 2 years, we have witnessed enormous explosive eruptions such as that of the Hunga Tonga volcano which released an amount of energy equivalent to hundreds of atomic bombs, and massive lava flows, as at the Cumbre Vieja at La Palma, which was estimated to have a total volume of 80 million cubic me ...[Read More]