Possible eruption at Zvezdnoye Ozero

Image from Google Earth. Zvezdnoye Ozero (Star Lake) Caldera in the middle. Around are volcanic lakes that belong to the Zvezdnoye Volcanic Field. The volcano erupted the Chirinda Ignimbrite 600 000 years ago.

Very little is known about the volcano Zvezdnoye Ozero (Star Lake, 67D26’05’’N 102D24’26’’E) in the Kraznojarsk Kraj in Russia. It is situated in the northern end of the Siberian Traps, but is otherwise unrelated to the famous Igneous Province.

It is believed to have erupted the last time about 600 000 years ago in a caldera forming eruption when it produced the Chirinda Ignimbrites. The volcano was until recently considered to be completely extinct.

In late September a persistant and long (27 days) swarm of earthquakes consisting of more than 4 000 separate earthquakes took place ranging up to 3.1 on the local magnitude scale. Scientists from KVERT under leadership of Dr Igor Kurchatov moved to this very remote area to emplace essential equipment on orders from the GKO (Gosudarstvennyj komitet oborony).

Photograph by Dr Igor Kurchatov. In the backdrop is the village of Chirinda that lies on the edge of the Zvezdnoye Ozero (Star Lake). The village is now believed to be gone with all of its residents and the scientific team under leadership of Dr. Igor Kurchatov.

From the third of October until mid February they measured a Bradyseism causing an uplift of 190cm. Then a second swarm started on the 17^th of February that has been ongoing until yesterday. During the last few days heightened levels of seismic tremor combined with elevated reading of SO2 in the Zvezdnoye Ozero. The lake had on the 30^th of March turned highly acidic and the water had dropped nine meters.

The heightened activity caused President Putin to order the evacuation of the 53 nomads living in the area. See video.

Initial reports say onset of eruption was highly explosive, after the initial report to the Committee of Internal Security of the State, no further report has come from the scientists or the nomads evacuated to the nearby village.

CARL

Sheepy Dalek – Name that Lava IV!

Last week I was too lazy. I learned to make it far more tricky so that google searches don’t help. I got a lot of nice pictures from the crowd that I will use. Please keep on sending them in.

The Score is:
2 Talla
1 Schteve
1 Jim
1 Luisport
1 Heather B
1 Birgit

Photograph by our own Ursula. Click on the pic to get a larger version.

Here is this weeks instalment. 1 point for the volcano, 1 point for the vent, and 1 point for the lavas. To get the lava point you need to give more than one, and describe them. So, 3 points to grab!

Sissels video

Sissel has made a video of my last post on Bob. Check it out!

Spica

As you might have noticed there are 3 new Dragons (Moderators) around keeping things tidy. So, all say hello to Rockjanitor, Shadow and Spica.

Spica has been tidying up the pages above, and now wants you all to help fill in links about all things volcanic under the new page entitled “Treasury”. This is the new treasure throve of links to various sites with more information. So put in all the links you have up there. It will help the newcomers as they arrive a lot.

CARL

Cappadocia – Upright volcano of Turkey

Love valley in Goreme, Turkey.

These somewhat interesting ‘mushroom’, like landforms are part of the volcanic landscape of Cappadocia, the ‘Land of Beautiful Horses’. Cappadocia lies in south eastern central Turkey, some 275 km south-east of Ankara.

This article should serve as an introduction to what is an exceedingly complex volcanic province and only ‘scratches the surface’ of what is in the locale.

The volcanism in the area and in southern Turkey in general, is associated with the Alpine front orogenic belt with the Afro-Arabian plate moving northwards and being subducted below, the Anatolian sub-plate of the main Euro-Asian plate; the Taurus mountains being the Alpine equivalent. The volcanism, which here began in the Miocene period about 18m years ago and as with most subduction zones, is predominantly of the calc-alkaline type, with arcuate volcanic features. In Cappadocia, the main volcanoes (out of 19 major and many other satellite monogenetic and maar vents) are Erciyes Dag (3916m), Hasan Dag (3253), Melendiz (2963m), Kegiboydoran and Develi; the former 2, being most recent, have had the most obvious effects on the landscape of the area.

The simplified structural/geological maps of the area, below, indicates the volcanism is related in part to major tectonic lateral displacement or (strike-slip) faults interacting with a second east-west structural trend, being that of the Pontides/Taurus orogenic belts and further with a lithospheric thinning. This thinning and the extensional strike-slip faulting is assumed to be a result of plate post-collisional rebound. Also of note is the SW-NE trending Ecemish fault having the both the same trend and displacement direction as the East Anatolian fault; the latter forming an active transform fault boundary between the Anatolian and Arabian plates.The tectonics are further complicated by the distant rifting associated with the Dead Sea fault involving the separation of the Arabian- from the African plates.

maps from www.geoexpro.com/article/Cappadocia_Turkey_Civilisations_in_a_Volcanic_Terrain/3d44953c.aspx

There is a general range of rock types, the majority of the ignimbrites are of rhyolitic to rhyodacitic composition, mixed with basaltic lavas and ash deposits and show a general progression from the older rhyodacite ignimbrites through basaltic andesites to younger pyroxene-hornblende basalt and finally more recent olivine basaltic magmas. In some areas there are thin interbedded limestone horizons.

There are at least 9 major Miocene/Pliocene ignimbrite horizons, covering over 40,000sq km and a volume in excess of 1000cu km; for example, the Inescu ignimbrite, dated at c2.8m years covers 7,750sq km and has an estimated volume of 38cu km. and is associated with the Erciyes/Kocdag complex and along with the Valibaba Tepe ignimbrite, are the most widespread.

The whole volcanic area is superimposed on a crystalline basement of granodiorite, which contains spilitic/ophiolitic inclusions, c/f  the Troodos Complex of Cyprus.

Erciyes Dag; from www.panoramio.com/photo/55273967

As can be seen, Erciyes Dag is heavily eroded; the present cone has been developing in the multiple collapse caldera of the Kocdag complex in two phases for about 0.9m years. The Kocdag complex was the first stage of the development of Erciyes Dag, with basalt and andesite lavas emitted from cinder cones; to be followed by the caldera collapse – 14x18km – associated with massive eruption of 110cu km (including 63cu km of tephra) of pyroclastics in two phases, with plinian fall deposits found 50km from the vent. The second phase involves emplacement of several pyroclastic flow deposits, culminating with the major Valibaba Tepe ignimbrite (2.8m years) with a volume of some 40cu km. Later eruptions vented andesite flows, dacite dome production and basic andesite flows, but limited to the immediate vicinity. The last dated eruption was a dacite flow c83000years ago, but minor eruptions have been noted from satellite cones since.

The Hasan Dag is much less eroded than Erciyes Dagi, the present cone being built in a 4km diameter caldera formed approximately 10000years ago, extruded lavas and pyroclastics covering some 750sq km and a volume of around 350cu km. Continued fumarolic activity indicates the possibility or potential for future activity.

Photograph from wikipedia. Volcano of Hasan Bagi.

The combined products from Erciyes- and Hasan Dag have produced the Cappadocian landscape as indicated in the ‘mushroom’ picture. These structures’ known as ‘fairy chimneys’ are weathering product, where relatively soft, less consolidated airfall ash is capped by resistant welded tuffs or lavas , the ‘cap’ being the latter material that has protected the ash from weathering. A closer inspection of these mushrooms, shows the ‘stem’ to be of fine grained variably stratified ash. Where sufficiently thick, these features have been easily excavated and make for excellent, if different dwellings.

From http://www.triggerpit.com/2011/02/10/magnificent-magical-moonscape-cappadocia-turkey/

For further reading and with detailed figures and maps that wouldn’t copy (!)

http://www.geo.mtu.edu/EHaz/ConvergentPlatesClass/lara/Dhont%20et%20al.-JVGR1998.pdf

http://hal.inria.fr/docs/00/09/00/83/PDF/LePennec-JVGR-2005.pdf

http://www.mta.gov.tr/v2.0/eng/dergi_pdf/66/5.pdf

http://host.nigde.edu.tr/gurhan/makaleler/sultan%20saz%20fulltext.pdf

http://journals.tubitak.gov.tr/earth/issues/yer-04-13-3/yer-13-3-1-0307-1.pdf

ALAN C

El Hierro and the art of Bad Science

The first of the phreatomagmatic explotions that was caught on a picture back when the eruption was going at a much higher rate than today. It was most likely not a real phreatomagmatic explosion, it was more likely to have been a combination together with a massive gas release. But this is what will be in store most likely for the residents of La Restinga.

After releasing the sixth missive that volcanic vent affectionately known as Bob is dead, the authorities have now finished the monitoring of the volcano.

This declaration of cessation of activity is contrary to all known data. All released data point towards that the volcanic edifice is still growing at a rate of 10 to 15 meters per 2 weeks. There is still harmonic tremor associated with new magma arriving into the volcanic system from the deep. There was a steady and visible disturbance over the volcanic vent, and the gas-measurements are still above normal readings.

Instead of happily following what is happening the authorities have decided to shut down the web cameras, discontinue active monitoring, abandoning bathymetric scans of the volcanic edifice, and generally trying to hide that there is a volcano on the island of El Hierro.

This is most likely done due to political pressure to achieve a former state of touristic bliss, since it does not have any good scientific foundation.  The responsible organizations have instead chosen to only rely on data that supports cessation, disregarding contrary factual information. This is the Popperian “Art of Bad Science”.

Only problem here is that soon Bob will be hitting the threshold of where hydro magmatic activity will be clearly visible on the surface. Something that was caught on video a couple of days ago by our commentators in here. This activity will only grow during the upcoming weeks.

In 2 to 4 weeks the authorities will most likely have a set of rather distraught residents at La Restinga as they start to see ‘rooster-tail’ explosions surfacing on top of Bob. If activities then continue we are somewhere around 14 to 20 weeks before the volcano surfaces.

Now somebody with a bit of math skill will say, “What? It grows with more than five meters per week! It should be up faster”. Not really, this is due to a cone needing more material to grow, the higher it get. So, the speed of growing in height will decrease over time.

The authorities are probably betting/hoping that the eruption will finish within the next few weeks and save their collective behinds. Sadly they will just then issue a proclamation that the volcano have “re-awakened” to save them.

I am sadly reminded of George Orwell’s 1984, where the author describes “newspeak”, where the meaning of words changes as the powers that be see fit. I never thought I would see scientists involved in the Newspeak of Volcanoes.

I feel very much for the poor residents of La Restinga that in a short time will be scared uselessly and without cause out of scientists running the errands of political buffoons.

CARL

Problem with redirects to other sites

The picture is a statement about what I feel for unsolicited redirects and Badoo in particular. I hope this will be solved quickly.

Hello Everybody!

As some of you have noticed during the last half a day there has been a few people being redirected to some sort of rather creepy dating site. This is believed to be caused by an ad run by WordPress that has an ill formated tag.

For the time being my suggestion is that you create a WordPress commenting account. This will first of all make you immune to any ads since those only show for readers and commentators that are not logged in, and it also solves the redirect problem.

I have now twice adressed WordPress about this problem, without getting a good answer, or had the problem solved. So, if you suffer from any ad related problem, log in on your account, and second of all, please email me emediatly on the link to the right.

You can also go to the Support page and complain in the appropriate thread titled “Badoo redirects still happening” http://en.forums.wordpress.com/forum/support You must be logged in with your WordPress account to do so.

CARL