Below the warm and tranquil waters of the Caribbean, some 480 km away from Puerto Rico, the North America Plate is being subducted under the Caribbean Plate. This has led to the formation of the Lesser Antilles volcanic arc; the result of the formation of reservoirs of magma as fluids from the down going North America Plate are mixed with the rocks of the overlying Caribbean Plate. The continued m ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: An explosive cloud
Karymsky volcano, 2004. Credit: Alexander Belousov (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)
One of the world’s most volcanically active regions is the Kamchatka Peninsula in eastern Russia. It is the subduction of the Pacific Plate under the Okhotsk microplate (belonging to the large North America Plate) which drives the volcanic and seismic hazard in this remote area. The surface expression of the subduction zone is the 2100 km long Kuril-Kamchatka volcanic arc: a chain of volcanic isla ...[Read More]
Imaggeo on Mondays: A Patagonia landscape dominated by volcanoes
Imagine a torrent of hot and cold water, laden with rock fragments, ash and other debris hurtling down a river valley: this is a lahar. A by-product of eruptions of tall, steep-sided stratovolcanoes, lahars, are often triggered by the quick melting of snow caps and glaciers atop high volcanic peaks. The history of the Ibañes River and its valley, in southern Chile, are dominated by their proximity ...[Read More]
The ethics of mining
This guest blog post is brought to you by Nick Arndt, Professor at ISTerre and convenor of the the Great Debate at last year’s General Assembly, Metals in our backyard: to mine or not to mine. During the Great Debate the issue of whether the environment impact of mining outweighs the benefits vs. domestic metal production was questioned. With Europe currently importing between 60-100% of the metal ...[Read More]