The (ash) history of Iceland, in my backyard – Part II

In part I we found the main bands of a excavation here in SW Iceland:

- dark band of Veidivötn 1477
- double white layer band of Hekla from 1341 (or Öraefajökull 1362) and Hekla 1104
- dark band of Vatnaöldur 870 (called the “Settlement Ash”).
- thick white layer of Hekla 3 (around 1000 BC), one of largest eruptions in Iceland.

But there are many minor layers besides the obvious ones. We will get to them now.

FIGURE 1, Below the 870 settlement ash layer, there is one unknown grey and well visible band. There is also a possible eruption of Grimsvötn and Hekla, and then we find the major Hekla 3 band. Below that, we find a thick dark band, probably from Katla, around 2200 BC, and before that we probably have the ash from the Grimsnes eruptions (dating 3500 BC). Photograph by Irpsit, all rights belonging to him, used by permission.

An unknown metalic grey layer

Above the Hekla 3 layer, there is an unknown layer. It has a strange shiny metalic gray color. This is an unknown eruption estimated between 500 AC and 500 BC. Many eruptions happened at that time, not only from Hekla and Katla, but also an eruption at Torfajökull at 150 AC, Hengill at 80 BC (which is only 20km to the west), and also in Vatnafjöll. I don’t think this ash came from Katla or Hekla, unless they erupted a different ash. This type of shiny metalic ash color is notoriously different from every other ash I have seen in Iceland. But I have seen similar shiny lava rocks in Iceland, in a few places, but I can’t remember where. Until then I cannot make a guess about the identity of this layer.

There also seems to be a brown band between the Hekla 3 and the unknown grey layer. It is probably an undated eruption of Grimsvötn, which usually has this color of ash (around 100-500 BC). There is also a light colored band (just above Hekla 3), and that is probably an eruption of Hekla (around 500-1000 BC).

Below the Hekla 3 layer, there are several bands, shown in Fig.2. We first find a thin band of orange material (at 53cm), then a very large band of dark ash (starting at 56cm), and then another broad band of orange material at around 65cm. There is a thin white layer between both broad bands of dark and orange material (not visible in Fig.2).

FIGURE 2. Below Hekla 3, there is a lot of bands to be found, upon close look. But especially notorious is one dark band around 2000 BC (56 cm deep), possibly from Katla (its something really thick), and also a double band around 5000 BC (75cm deep). Photograph by Irpsit, all rights belonging to him, used by permission.

Around 1500-2000 BC: Torfajökull and Katla?

The first thin orange band is estimated at around 1500 BC. The most likely candidate is the eruption of Torfajökull around 1200 BC, because it tend to erupt such colorful rhyolite ash. The broad grey band is estimated around 2200 BC. Most likely it was one strong eruption from Katla (tephra N4 or N2). What is was, it was big, because this is a thick layer. However around this time, we also had records of an eruptions at Langjökull, dated as ~2050 BC, which was actually nearby, only 40km north (it’s closer than Hekla), in a small shield volcano named Lambahraun. If the eruption started explosively, then its ash might have reached here, but officially there is no known ash from the Langjökull volcanoes and I also don’t expect that even a nearby shield volcano would deposit such a major amount of ash. So we stay with Katla.

Hekla 4 and Grimsnes eruptions (2300 to 4200 BC)

The thin white band is probably the eruption of Hekla4, around 2300 BC, which was a very large eruption. The broad orange material is almost likely from nearby Grimsnes volcano, that erupted several times circa 3500 to 4200 BC. I am actually inside Grimsnes volcanic region; its monogenic cones are just 5-8 km away. During the Grimsnes eruptions, there was some local ash fall. The volcano is just composed of crater rows, with one major explosion crater and the other cones being a deep red. It’s no wonder that the layers from Grimsnes eruptions are of a similar color.

FIGURE 3. Grimsnes volcano, located only 5km away. Its the smallest active volcanic system in Iceland, producing crater rows every few thousand years. It produces plenty of iron-red rock material. In the picture, we see Seydisholar volcanic cone, with Búrfell pleistocene volcano in the background (this is another Búrfell; and behind it lies Hengill to one side and Langjökull to the other) Photograph by Irpsit, all rights belonging to him, used by permission.

Hekla 5 and Botnahraun/Laki, or Holmsá fires eruptions, or Thjorsáhhraun (5000-6000 BC)?

At around 75cm deep (estimated at 5000 BC) we find what looks like a double layer: white material above and a deep dark brown below. It is easy to assign this white material to Hekla5 (another large Hekla eruption at 5050 BC). The brown material underneath is unknown, but likely Grimsvötn. Possibly the Botnahraun/Laki eruption. Alternatively it might also correspond to another big eruption at this time: the Holmsá fires, another Eldgjá-like fissure that opened to the east of Katla. And still it might also be the Thjorsáhraun lava from Bardarbunga/Veidivötn, around 6600 BC. That lava actually travelled some 200km from Veidivötn towards the southwest, passing only cross 5km east from this location. That is the largest lava field on Earth since the ice age.

And now we get even older in time… Seydisholar 7000 BC

Below this point, it starts to get complicate to assign the identity of any layer because of a mud deposit underneath. There is some orange material just above it, which I assume it might have been the eruption of Seydisholar at 7000 BC, from the nearest Grimsnes crater row. That was the largest eruption of the Grimsnes system, with an estimated VEI4. And I am just a few kms from it.

Saksunarvatn ash 8000 BC?

At some points, there is a strange thick dark brown band around this depth, at around 70-80cm (see Fig. 4), which could have been the famous Saksunarvatn ash layer (Grimsvötn, 8000 BC): the largest eruption in Iceland in the Holocene. This ash is widespread recorded in northern Europe, and is used as an important marker dating the beginning of the Boreal period (end of the Young Dryas glaciation). Both the double layer (the 5000-6000 BC, referred before) and this deep dark brown layer, seem to ondulate, with one sometimes appearing over the other, and then exchanging positions. Their age is therefore highly uncertain.

Figure 4. Overall of our soil profile, with major bands identified. We cannot go before 8000 BC, as mud was deposited. Photograph by Irpsit, all rights belonging to him, used by permission.

The tale of a river bed, nearer sea levels, and also the ice age

Below 90cm we mostly find mud. This might have been a time when glaciers were over this region. At the glaciation peak, the ice sheet must have been at least 400m thick here, because of the nearby tuya Ingolfsfjall. However the peak glaciation must have been short, because we find much more shield volcanoes at this region than tuyas. About 5 km north, there is a large moraine, from where most of the time the large glacier terminated. For most of the ice age I was just at outside of the glacier.

The mud might been also caused by nearby Hvitá river (which drains the now distant Langjökull). The excavation is just next to a waterfall-like valley, thay I know it was the path of Hvitá river now 2km east.  Therefore it might been subject to much soil erosion and river deposits sometime before 8000 BC.

In early post-glacial time, the sea level was higher and the coast was actually nearby. There is actually evidende of a coast just 5km south (in the nearby shield volcano Hestfjall). The sea must have been pretty close and again this location was subject to much erosion. Because of all these reasons, we possibly do not have the record for the famous Vedde Ash (Katla 10.000 BC), which is one of the two largest eruptions in Iceland in recent millenia; the other was the Grimsvötn Saksunarvatn ash (both VEI6). In one spot, I did see some white material around 90cm deep, but I am unsure if this was it.

Ancient Lava (from Lyndhalsheidi)

Finally, on the bottom of the excavation, around 1.5m deep, there is a bedrock of lava rock (visible at some spots at lesser depths, such as in Fig.2). They are eroded and rounded (probably by the last glaciation). This is lava from the shield volcano Lyndhalsheidi that is just 8km northwest. Its lava actually flowed where I now stand, but that eruption was on the interglacial before the last glacial, so it was a long ago. However the glaciation continuously exposed and eroded that ancient bedrock.

Layers near the surface

There is no significant ash layer since the 1477 Veidivötn ash. However we can see sometimes faint layers from recent eruptions. One black layer around 5cm is probably the VEI5 Katla 1918. One faint white layer at 8cm is probably Hekla 1845 eruption. And a faint dark layer around 12cm is probably Laki 1783 (but it could have been the eruptions of Katla in 1755 or 1721; not visible in Fig.5).

FIGURE 5. Ash layers from recent eruptions in Iceland. There are not as continuous as the bigger ones, they only appear here and there. One can also see that the main white layer are actually two distinct white bands. The ash of 1477 is also double but because it started as a first eruption of rhyolite pink ash from Torfajökull, followed by basaltic brown ash of Veidivötn later. Photograph by Irpsit, all rights belonging to him, used by permission.

ICELANDIC ASH RECORDED IN GREENLAND

FIGURE 6. Again, an overview of the soil profile, but now using the initial picture form part I, and color enhanced. It’s exciting to contemplate the history of 10.000 years of eruptions in such a small soil wall. Photograph by Irpsit, all rights belonging to him, used by permission.

To finish today I read some papers that described which ash layers appeared in Greenland ice cores. We find there the 1362 Öraefajokull, 1104 Hekla, 870 Vatnaöldur ash, Hekla 3 and Hekla 4 eruptions, the very large ash layers of Saksunarvatn/ Grimsvötn (8000 BC) and Vedde / Katla (10000 BC), followed by many ash layers from Katla, Hekla or Grimsvötn, and finally other two very large ash layers: one from Tindfjallajökull Thorsmörk ignimbrite, 53.000 years ago (that was a VEI6+, and possibly even a VEI7). The volcano is still dormant now and right next to Katla and Eyjafjallajökull); the other big eruption was 300.000 years ago, and hypothesized to be from Krafla or Hofsjökull.

After this lenghty post, please feel free to call me a big ash hole.

IRPSIT

Editors note: Do click on the images, then you will see all of the details since they are rather large.

Update by Spica:
Here is the link to part I of the story.

The (ash) history of Iceland, in my backyard – Part I

This week I was lucky enough to have a recently dug square hole (10m per 10m, about 2 meter deep) some 200 meters from my house in Southwest Iceland.

Needless to say I spend the past bright summer evenings of Iceland inside this hole, which has nothing else but dirt and rocks. To us, volcano lovers, having such a hole in a volcanic land is like finding a mine of gold!

The soil shows many layers of colored material, which is nothing but the ash that has fallen from the many eruptions that happened in Icelandic history. This is a science called tephrachronology and it became my newest hobby.

Photograph and copyright belonging to Irpsit, used on explicit permission by Volcano Café. An excavation near home. And I stayed until late night to look at its strange layers.

When an eruption happens (if it’s the explosive type) the ash usually drifts according to local winds. In Iceland, the wind can blow from every direction depending on the kind of weather. This results in ash being deposited in a space-specific way for every different eruption.

A large eruption such as Askja in 1875 (VEI5) blew almost entirely to the northeast (so since I live to the southwest, I cannot find any Askja ash). In practice this means that the absense of a famous eruption does not mean it did not happen, just that the ash blew somewhere else. Likewise, a smaller eruption can deposit plentiful ash if the same wind keeps blowing in one direction (example of Eyjafjallajökull blowing southwards towards Europe in 2010).

In one single spot, the ash from different volcanoes accumulates over time, giving a profile of layers, that correspond to a time orderly of eruptions of different volcanoes. Usually, famous eruptions such Vatnaöldur in 870 (when the settlers arrived) can be used as markers for less known eruptions. The identity of a volcano can be roughly identified by looking at its color. We know that few volcanoes in Iceland produce white tephra, only Hekla and the rarer eruptions of Öræfajökull and Askja. Grimsvötn often produces brown ash, while Katla or Eyjafjallajökull black ash.

But enough of introductions! Let’s go for the real thing.

Photograph and copyright belonging to Irpsit, used on explicit permission by Volcano Café. The history of many eruptions is recurded as different ash layers.

The walls from the hole reveal, at instant glansing, two bright WHITE layers (figure 1). At close inspection, the upper white layer (at 25cm) is actually a double of two light colored layers, while the lower at (49 cm) is a single thick layer. Obviously these layers seem to come from Hekla.

The Hekla 3 white layer
To confirm whether or not these are from Hekla, there is a scientific paper of a soil profile done very near to where I live, around Grimsnes volcano (just 5km from where I live). They found only one large white layer at 50cm which corresponds to the largest eruption of Hekla during Holocene, the Hekla 3 eruption (a VEI5+) of 1000 BC. This is probably our second and largest layer.

Picture taken from Wikimedia Commons. Hekla is the source of much white ash in Iceland (as observe from the deposits on its flanks).

So, imagine, an eruption that deposited a layer of about 4cm thick ash here. That is pretty astonishing considering that a normal Hekla eruption barely deposits ash here (I am about 50km from it). This euption resulted in a 18 year climate change in Europe, observed in tree rings. It should have been one big huge eruption.

Now, if we look at the top white double layer, that is surrounded up and down by two thick DARK bands. These are actually a pinkish brown. Both are about 3cm thick ash (impressive too), the lower band is especially large at some spots.
The two dark Bardarbunga ash bands
According to other studies (and to Inge B), and also my conclusion, these are both the Veidivotn ash (1477) and the Vatnaöldur ash (870 AC), known as Settlement Ash (because it happen around the arrival of the vikings to Iceland). At least the Vatnaöldur ash is widepread reported everywhere in Southwest Iceland. Furthermore both have orange colored deposits underneath (actually light pink in Veidivotn ash, and bright orange in Vatnaöldur ash) which is expected. Both eruptions started with rhyolite ash from Torfajokull followed by the greyish/brown color of Bardarbunga fissures. The Torfajokull ash in 1477 was erupted from Brennisteinsalda, which is a mountain very colorful but mostly pink and orange.

Brennisteinsalda is the volcanic cone that erupted some colorfull rhyolite in 1477 (within Torfajökull).

The “double” white band of Hekla 1104 and 1341
If these are correct (I don’t confirm they are), then there are 2 white tephra eruptions in between. It’s easy to ascribe one to Hekla in 1104 (the largest eruption of Hekla since settlement (and second largest of all volcanoes), a very destructive one, but the ash during that one, was reported to go mostly northwards). The other one could either be the eruptions of Hekla in 1300 or 1341 (both with heavy ash) or less likely the 1362 eruption of Öræfajökull, which was the largest eruption of all, since settlement! Yes, larger (in tephra and intensity) than all Katla eruptions, Laki, Veidivotn, Askja or Hekla. Few of you know that Öræfajökull is a mamoth volcano, the largest in Iceland (and tallest).

However, I do think that this more recent white layer, was most likely the 1341 eruption. In 1300 the ash blew mostly northwards resulting in a famine, but in 1341 it blew westwards, and quite far away (towards Akranes). In 1362, the ash of Öræfajökull blew mostly to the southeast, opposite of where I am (and I know little ash felt to the west, in Vík – information from Skaftafell national park).

There is so much I write in a second part. All the minor layers in between (that you only see in close-ups) and all the broad bands below Hekla 3. Until then, let’s us discuss what we have so far.

IRPSIT

El Hierro and the Physics of magma chambers

Image from Nature GeoScience. From Phillip A. Allens article Geodynamics: Surface impact of mantle processes.

Part 1

Not many people think about what is great with physics. People are normally more occupied with buying Prada hand-bags to carry their rat-sized yapp-dogs than physics. The great thing with physics is that the laws of nature are universal. And with that I mean that they can be transferred easily from the school books into real life, and from one part of science into another.

I am as most of you know not a volcanologist or a geologist, but I am a physicist. So every time I try to understand a volcano I do it from how it is behaving from the point of perspective of the laws of nature.

This time I would like to write about a few things regarding how magma chambers must be formed according to physics. I will mainly not talk about magma chambers because they are fairly hard to visualize since nobody has seen one in real life as it is forming. But most of us have for instance blown up a balloon.

In this case we will be talking about magma chambers that come from hotspot volcanism; the process will be slightly different in a subduction volcano. But first we need some background, this post will be about precisely that background.

Hotspots, weightlessness and Blobs

Let us start with what is required for a magma chamber to even start forming. And as a physicist I am always talking about basic forces. And there is only one basic force, and that is energy. There are of course many types of energy, and in this case we are talking about energy as mechanical pressure and heat.

Thankfully for the poor fledgling magma chamber there is one thing that causes both pressure and heat, and that is your basic magma. So, let us drop up a ball of nice hot juicy magma from the hotspot under El Hierro.

It is not entirely clear how magma travels upwards via a hotspot, but we know there are two types of hotspots. First we have the deep Icelandic type that brings up material from the depth, this magma is hot and arrives at high (relatively) speed and with great force. It brings with it an assortment of rare and heavy metals from deep down at the boundary between the core and the mantle. The other type is a colder and less deep hotspot. The magma here is either brought up from within the mantle, or created as the hotspot heats up material close to the MOHO boundary either through heat or pressure, perhaps even a mixture between them. This type creates magma that is low in precious metals, and gives a low Uranium-Thorium (UrTh) count which in turn is a dead giveaway that it comes from a shallow source. The Canarian hotspot seems to end up somewhere in the middle of these two types, it is definitely not melting crust as a part of the magma creation, the almost pure basic basalt tells us that, on the other hand it is not from the core/mantle boundary since the UrTh count is wrong for that option. Let it suffice to say that the Canarian hotspot is a bastard mongrel of a hotspot.

So, where does now the pressure to drive any hotspot come from? Well, once again the answer is not simple. We have at least two sources. The first is heat; the Earth is producing loads of juicy heat due to at least 3 different processes. The first one is UrTh and other atomic nuclear processes. Yepp, we live on an atomic reactor. The second one a form of pressure called overburden pressure. That is the combined weight of the planet pushing downwards, this creates compression heat. The third is through the dear old gravity slowly massaging the planet, this is by far the smallest of powers creating the heat. Here I have simplified a bit, there are more forces at play than this.

Image of nested magma.

So, how come then that magma travels upwards? The answer might surprise you a lot. If you are getting a headache from this it is normal. Let us imagine that you where hanging at the exact mid-spot of the planet. The pressure would be phenomenal from the overburden pressure; still you would notice something odd. For the first time in your life you would be completely weightless. This would be due to the entire planets gravitational pull would be affecting your entire body in every direction at the same time, effectively cancelling out any gravitational effect.

What does this now have to do with magma? Well, you have magma under tremendous pressure that does not weigh a lot. A cubic decimeter of magma at the mantle/core boundary is considerably more lightweight than the same volume of water. And at the same time it is squeezed by tremendous pressure.  Here we enter a nice little simple physics, when you squeeze a fluid it will try to run away, in this case it can’t go down, it is fairly buoyant and will try to float. Now we just need one small thing, a conduit. Enter the heat.

Energy will always go from a high state to a lower state; this is the nutty little physics law that also gives that order will always go towards disorder, in other words, entropy and enthalpy. So, the core will try to lose heat, and the heat will always be able to escape, and once a convective current of heat has started to run upwards it will jolly well keep on going. When magma finds a stream of heat going upwards it will follow that stream because the fluid will follow the point of least resistance. And that is why a mantle plume and a hotspot is the same thing (simple physics). The mantle plume cannot exist without a hotspot, and the hotspot will sooner or later create the mantle plume.

Now our blob of magma is finally moving upwards towards El Hierro, the trip started a long time ago, it takes a while to go through all that semi-permeable heated pipe that runs up through the mantle. One day, let us say on the 24^th of June 2012 our blob of magma arrives at the bottom of the crust under El Hierro.

The speed with which it arrives is very slow even compared to a human walking, but the weight is enormous, the same goes for the amount of heat energy and the buoyancy pressure. Let us just say that it is like a comet sized blow-torch hitting the almost melted MOHO boundary. It will cut through the first layers in a rather short time. As it goes on up through the bottom of the crust it decelerates fairly quickly, and that is the point where all the fun starts, the formation of the magma chamber.

Until the next time!

CARL

El Hierro – What did Elvis have to do with the Island?

Photograph by unknown. Orchilla Lighthouse, famous for being “The end of the World”.

During the night life got fairly interesting in El Hierro as the residents woke up from no less than two earthquakes above 4M. The larger of these two reached 4.4M.

Otherwise it seems like the magma continues to move in a general southwesterly direction. This has had as an effect that many of the GPS stations on the island is registering a downfall. It is at the moment uncertain where the magma is going.

The activity that we have seen during the last weak and a half is a sill intrusion, or a horizontal oblong shaped flat intrusion between different layers of rock. The intrusion has happened at great depth, around 20 kilometers deep. The activity started roughly under the old volcano of Tanganasoga, and then progressed towards the south east, passing the famous lighthouse of Las Orchillas on the way. The lighthouse is famous for being called “The End of the World”, a strangely fitting denominator when taking the current activity into account.

If we look closer at the 4.4M earthquake it had some rather intriguing features. It had a very weak transient in the beginning. The transient is the initial earthquake that is starting the rift of the fault plane, it was around 1.9M in this initial phase. After that a heavy magmatic component started as magma gushed in to fill the void left by the earthquake, and as the magma entered it further delaminated the layers in the rock, and more magma flooded in and so on and so forth. Let us just say that it was a lot of magma moving very rapidly.

Image by IGN. The earthquake starts at roughly 41 minutes, and it continued for 6 minutes before ending.

The angle was also rather interesting. The fault plane was tilted at 134 degrees, so the propagation of the earthquakes fault plane was going upwards at an angle. This gave the earthquake a fairly hard profile to plot, and both location and depth was changed due to this. Initial depth was set at 12 kilometers, as that was the end point of the faulting, but the beginning of the faulting was at 21 kilometers. And at an angle of 134 degrees this makes the start and finish line of the earthquake being somewhat different in location.

The earthquake was both Long Period, and a of the Broadband type. What I like to call a wet earthquake as oposing the dry earthquake that is associated with tectonic movement. It also look quite a bit like the sonic signature of water moving unexpectedly in a tube.

Worried in El Hierro?

The activity is right now inconclusive. The activity has started to show higher up, but the bulk of the earthquakes is still deep down. So it is fairly impossible to say where an eruption might occur. Some believe that it will happen in the western part of the island, or out at sea south to southwest of the lighthouse. Some believe it will in the end be an eruption closer to land from the vent called Bob, or even on land close to La Restinga.

In the end it is more likely that we will have another Effusive Lava Vent In the Sea, or to put it in short, another ELVIS.

If you are feeling really worried, or things get worse you should read the splendid article on volcano preparedness written by our resident Icelander. More volcano wisdom in that article than anywhere else, a wisdom coming out of extended experience of volcanic eruptions.

http://volcanocafe.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/icelanders-do-prepare-for-eruptions-a-personal-observation/

I would also recommend that if you feel the need to relocate yourself quickly, go to the eastern part of the Island. It should be fairly safe since there has been no activity there. In the light of things, if you are really worried, or things heat up even more, do not wait for an official call for evacuation. Just go if you can or feel the need. Remember that in the end it is you who are responsible for your decisions regarding you and your loved ones.

CARL

El Hierro – Day 7

Photograph by Cestomano. The lighthouse of the Orchillas was once known as the end of the world. Under this lighthouse is where the new magma chamber is forming.

This will mainly be a short update. Not much new has happened during the last few days, I will just try to explain why.

What we are seeing now is the formation of a new part of the magma chamber(s) under the island of El Hierro. The progression of earthquakes that we have seen moving roughly from Tanganasoga volcano towards the WSW is magma following a weak seam between two rock layers in the crust. This is creating a rather low, but wide, layer filled with magma. You can think of it as a cake, where the magma is a layer of custard cream between two pieces of bread.

Initially I thought that this layer would not be able to take a lot of magma before the magma would break through into the two older layered magma chambers that were created before the last eruption. My line of thinking was that as soon as that happened magma would move up into the old feeder channel leading towards the volcanic vent known as Bob south of La Restinga.

Image by IGN. The darkblue and read area is where a new magma chamber has started to form like a stacked layer in a cake.

Instead a large quantity of magma has gushed into this new formative magma chamber, which is continuing to grow. There is a rule in fluid dynamics that state that as a bladder (balloon) grows the rate of growth will decrease as the volume increases. This is why it takes more and more magma to keep the pressure at a constant level during the expansion. This is why we see fewer earthquakes as the size grows. It takes a larger amount of magma going into the system to create the pressure for the earthquakes to happen. We will also soon see that the rate of rapid uplift will be decreasing. Do not take this as a sign of the risk for an eruption decreasing. It is quite the opposite. Why? The rate of magma arriving is still constant, so, in due time it will break through.

Magma seems to have entered into the old feeder channel to Bob, how far up though is anyone’s guess. But, it seems to have stopped flowing upwards now, probably due to the opening being plugged up.

Instead we are now seeing a small amount of earthquakes entering into the zone between 16 and 8 kilometers from the surface. What is most likely is that we will see more of them during the next 48 hours; with a bit of luck we will be able to pinpoint the formation of an earthquake stack. That would be good since that could point towards a general area where there could be an eruption. Currently that is pointing towards the western area of the island, but that might change rapidly.

Image by IGN. A few earthquakes have started in the 16 to 8km depth range.

When the magma enters the region 8 kilometers and above the earthquakes will most likely stop, or be few and far apart. The reason for this is that there is a layer of old sediment there. Then there will be a brief flurry of earthquakes as the magma breaks through to the surface, unless it finds an old lava-tube, then it would be a quiet onset of eruption. The eruption would be of basalt or basanite, so it would most likely be a quiet effusive eruption. In the beginning it could be more vigorous due to gas pressure release.

I would still not rule out that the eruption will happen somewhere along the old feeder channel that lead out to Bob. If that happens I believe the eruption to happen somewhere closer to land than during the last eruption. It could also happen on land.

During this second phase of the eruptive cycle the level of information given out has been much improved. IGN is now giving out real GPS data instead of cumulative data. That is a huge improvement. Also Pevolca has started to write reports that are filled with technical details that helps a lot, and removes any chance of people accusing them of hiding data. If IGN and Pevolca keep up with this new openness they will find that people will be much happier. So, from us a big thanks for this new approach.

I would also like to point out to the political establishment of El Hierro that the last eruption will in the end be a big boon for the Island. Before nobody pretty much knew that El Hierro existed. Now many do. And that should in the end raise the number of visitors, especially from the rather large cadre of volcano aficionados. So, instead of trying to hide your volcano, flaunt it a bit. Be proud of it, and people will come to watch your beautiful island.

CARL