Eruption warning for El Hierro

The earthquake that started either the pre-eruptive run up, or a new eruption.

On the seventeenth of June a new phase of increased earthquakes was observed by commentators on this blog. The level of seismicity was both larger and more numerous than during the previous 3 months. The location of these earthquakes corresponded with the place where the first earthquakes happened during the run up to the previous eruption.

As I have said before, when new magma comes up from the deep via the mantle plume we would see earthquakes at this spot. On the twenty-second of June low frequency harmonic tremor started at two distinct frequencies (0,29 and 0,59Hz) that previously has proved to be related with renewed activity. The frequencies are believed to be a sign of new magma arriving from the deep.

At 21.23 hours on the twenty-fourth of June (yesterday evening) an earthquake of magnitude 3.1 occurred, and within minutes the harmonic tremor had increased in sufficient numbers to herald movement of magma up the magmatic conduit system. After that there has been 49 earthquakes ranging from 2M to 3.8M, which is a rather good sized earthquake swarm for an already active volcanic system.

It has been noted that the earthquakes are not at the exact spot where they were during the previous eruptive phase. The answer is rather simple, the previous earthquake loci have by now gone above the solidus point and is not any longer brittle enough; therefore the renewed pressure breaks the adjacent rock. In other words, the magma chamber has matured and evolved.

As the pressure started to build up from the recently arrived new magmatic material from deep it started to move towards the old conduit. This conduit is by now fairly blocked by solidified magma at the opening.

A renewed eruption will start somewhere along the old conduit leading south from the Tanganasoga volcanic system towards the old eruptive vents that build up the edifices of Bob south of La Restinga. The question is if the new eruption will take place at the original pillow lava and pumice cone of Bob, or up at the new vent slightly closer to La Restinga. Another option is that the old vents by now are to plugged for the lava to be able to escape that way. Then the most likely place is somewhere along the route of the old conduit. And that means closer to the town of La Restinga, or even on land close to or inside the town.

Currently I would say that there is a high risk of an eruption starting, or that it already has started. Visible signs of the eruptions should be coming within the next 3 days judged on previous behavior. The eruption will most likely not be larger than the previous one due to the pressure being lower, but if it happens closer to shore, or even on land, the effects might be more dramatic for the residents.

My judgment would have been to immediately evacuate La Restinga until the eruptive locus has been confirmed.

IGN and Pevolca has declined to comment on this.

Update:

Regarding why I wrote that unusual and stark warning directed to the residents of La Restinga. I want to clarify why.

1. From the current signs and previous behaviour of the Tanganasoga volcanic system I judge that there is a 2/3 risk for a new eruption soon.
2. I am fairly certain that Bob and the newer vent on the ridge above Bob towards La Restinga is congested by solidified lava and not viable any longer as eruptive vent.
3. During the end of the previous eruptive phase there was anomalous gas ventings closer to La Restinga, and 2 earthquakes located close to the port of La Restinga (one was inside the actual port).
4. We know that the conduit leads from Bob towards a magma chamber under Tanganasoga. The usual behavious for volcanoes of this type is propagating vents erupting ever closer to the central part of the volcano.
5. From all of this I judge it to be about a 50 percent risk that the new eruption would be sufficiently much closer to La Restinga to cause risk for the inhabitants, or even on land close to or inside La Restinga. One should remember that there is a scoria cone 100 meters outside of La Restinga.
6. The current harmonic tremor episode is of the broadband type that is normally associated with sudden heavy degassing caused by the earthquakes. This can in a few eruptions increase the likelyhood of a non benign type of eruption. Ie, that the next eruptive phase may be having a more vigorous start than the previous due to a lot of gas pressure building up.
7. IGN and Pevolca is not the most warningsome agencies on the planet, to put it mildly.

All of this put together gave me a bit of a judgement call crisis. Based on my consciense, my experience, and so forth I decided that someone should issue the warning that IGN and Pevolca most likely will not give. So, I gave a warning that I myself would adhere to. I personally would not be inside of La Restinga right now. I would rather have someone say I am an idiot and should shut up, or even in the end try to sue me, than feeling that I through being quiet was part in people dying.

I would though like to say that those who so far have questioned me (privately) have been quite correct in doing so, specifically since I was in a hurry when writing and therefore a bit vague.

Pevolca has notified that there will be a statement after their meating this afternoon, and also commented that the afternoon today was the fastest possible oportunity for the meeting regarding the current new activity.

Update 2

People have noticed down in the comments that the harmonic tremor is higher in frequency this time and look different. That is because it does.

Click on the image for a bigger view. Do not be alarmed by the text, what is stated there is about volcanoes that have had a long repose period.

The earthquakes have knocked off a lot of gas from the lava, and this causes something called a Broadband signal. These are normaly associated with more vigorous eruptions. The text in the image states the limit here as being a VEI-3 eruption following a broadband signal. But that is for a volcano that has been dormant for a while. At Tanganasoga the plumbing system is still in large parts open, so the pressure can not build up sufficiently to produce a VEI-3 eruption, and that most likely gives the broadband signal for a smaller possible event.

CARL

Urban volcanism!

The ironically named Mount Eden, near downtown Auckland.

Most people in the world agree on one thing: it is safer to live far from a volcano then it is living right on top of it. Living next too, or on top of a volcano is like sleeping in a cave with a friendly bear. Sure, it has it’s advantages, you stay nice and warm, you don’t have to worry about other predators, a good part of the year it is nice and quiet, but still….. you know that some day he will grab you and eat you. The inhabitants (some more permanent than others) of Herculanum, Pompeï, Heimaey and the Hawaiian Royal Gardens have found out the hard way.

New Zealand is, apart from being stunningly beautiful, one of the least populated countries in the World. When Western settlers arrived they could have chosen any location to go and build large cities. For some reason however, the inhabitants found it neccesary to build their largest city directly on top of a volcanic field with about 50 scoria cones, maars and tuff rings dotting the landscape. I suppose the knowledge of volcanism was not as developed back then as it is today, but nevertheless it is quite unfortunate.

Photograph by Mollivan Jon. Mount Taranaki.

New Zealand is dominated by subduction volcanism, with famous Mount Taranaki (or Egmont) as one of the most visually stunning stratovolcanoes in the world from both the ground and above, and with the infamous Taupo Volcanic Zone, best known for being one of the worlds “super” volcanoes. At 250 km from Auckland this is already quite a hazard on itself.

The Auckland Volcanic Field is a monogenetic volcanic field, meaning that an eruptive episode only happens once through a vent. Each eruptive episode generates a new vent somewhere within the volcanic field as opposed to “normal” volcanism where a volcanic vent has succesive eruptive episodes causing a volcano to build up and blow up occasionaly. The Auckland Volcanic Field produces basaltic scoria cones, maars and tuff rings (with the exception of the island of Rangitoto which erupted several times). All three are caused by the same type of magma, basaltic magma in this case, but the location the surface penetration, the eruptive flowrate and the total volume of the basalt determine the type of surface expression. The volcanic field has been active for about 150.000 (0.15M) years now. Older volcanic fields are found towards the south; South Auckland (1.5-0.5M), Ngatutura (1.8-1.5M) and Okete (1.8-2.7M).

The source of the basalt is not quite clear however. Basalt is normally not associated with subduction volcanism. Petrology and earthquake data have practically ruled out the possibility of the lava having an origin in melt generated by the subducting Pacific Plate. The Auckland volcanic field also sits some 200 km behind the active volcanic front of the Taupo Volcanic Zone. Furthermore, there is no evidence that the subducted Pacific plate reaches all the way to the Auckland volcanic Field.

Basalt is usually associated with mid-oceanic ridges/spreading centers or hotspot volcanism. Again, petrology has not been able to find much evidence for hotspot volcanism either. Additionaly, the propagation of the volcanic fields is directy opposite to the relative motion of the plate; the oldest volcanic field should have been in the north and the youngest in the south if a hotspot or mantle plume was involved. It is possible that the complex geology with major plates subducting, twisting and turning in the area is causing localised decompressional melting , leading to magma migration upwards right below the city of Auckland. There is some extention ongoing in the area, so this seems like a plausible explanation.

The Pacific plate and the Australian plate in a complicated geological setup

This image shows the subdution margin, the strike-slip faults to the southwest and extention(volcanic back-arc) to the northwest of the subduction margin.

Monogenetic volcanic fields are very interesting and highly unpredictable. The eruptions are not very large or extremely violent, but they can occur pretty much anywhere within the field at any time. With a large city with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants spanning the field, this is exactly what you don’t want. Paricutin in Mexico is the most famous example of this type of volcanism. One day you are happily working your crops, the next day you have to flee from your land because a volcano decided to take over your land. Bad luck, deal with it. Any new eruption within the Auckland Volcanic field will have as much compassion with buildings, streets, highways, parks and emergency shelters as Paricutin had with the crops that were growing there. This is what makes Auckland a relatively dangerous place to live in because it is not clear how much warning time there will be and how accurately the location of an eruption can be predicted with modern equipment.

The reason why new volcanoes pop up at random has to do with the generation of the magma. It is important that the generation occurs very slow. Slow enough to be unable to build a plumbing system that would efficiently conduct the magma to surface. Every new, hot, fresh slug of magma finds it’s own path to the surface, erupts and that’s it. The conduit cools and is no longer usable for the next slug of magma that arrives several decades or hundreds of years later below a slightly different part of the volcanic field. There is not enough magma flowing into one area to create a magma chamber in which the magma can evolve and produce more silicic types of magma.

Ridiculous in Los Angeles, not so ridiculous in Auckland. Bring out Tommy Lee Jones!

We have all seen the Hollywood movie “Volcano” and no doubt that many Los Angeles citizens have had a very good laugh at it (the La Brea tar pits are the surface expression of a leaking oilfield through a fault, it has nothing to do with volcanism whatsoever), but for the citizens of Auckland, those images are not even very far from the truth. The past gives an excellent example of what can happen. The next eruption in the field will most likely follow this scenario:

1 – Magma is forced upward through weak points in the crust.

2 – Either the magma contacts ground-water, or reduced pressure near the surface causes gases to bubble out of solution. The result is a phraetic or steam-blast eruption. The heaviest material is thrown out horizontally to form a tuff ring. Lighter material is blasted vertically to form an eruptive column. After a few days, weeks or months, the volcano falls quiet. Several of Auckland’s volcanos became extinct at this point.

3 – Additional magma may rise in the conduit. If enough magma is supplied, fire fountaining starts through one or more vents. Small lava flows may be produced, which do not escape the tuff ring. Sometimes the eruptions build scoria cones.

4- If fire fountaining continues beyond this point, the scoria cones can coalesce to rise and bury the tuff ring. Lava flows can also fill the surrounding valleys.

5 – Sometimes the outflow of lava is so great that it undermines the cone, which collapses into the flow and is carried away, leaving a horseshoe-shaped breached crater. If lava flows for long enough, nearby valleys are totally filled in and the lava floods the entire area with a large sheet.

Isn’t that just wonderful right in your own neighbourhood?

Map showing the city of Auckland and the eruptive centers.Pick your favourite spot to build your house.

The big question that remains is then: When is the next eruption going to be? Well, you will have to chop off one of the arms of a geologist to get a clear answer on that, but there are usually several hundred to several thousand years between eruptions in this field. The last one was about 600 years ago, so it might be a while before it is “overdue”, but it might be soon as well.

El Nathan

Katmai close to a nova rupta?

Photograph from Watchingforrocks.com Novarupta main vent in the middle of the image.

Commenter Luisport brought this to my attention. Following close to the centnerian celebration of the Katmai and Novarupta large eruption on the june sixth 1912, the volcanoes in question seem to have a slight case of being hungover.

As many of my readers know Novarupta was responsible for the largest eruption during the last 197 years. The eruption of Novarupta was about 30 percent larger than the more famous eruption of Krakatoa.

During the last two days Katmai/Novarupta has been suffering a medium sized swarm of earthquakes ranging from 2 to 3M. The number of earthquakes is not that high, but it is still worthwhile to point it out.

Source: USGS/CVO Alaskan Volcano Observatory. The red dots is the site of the current swarm.

Roughly at the same time as the onset of the earthquake swarm the level of tremor increased sharply for about 14 hours before falling back to back-ground levels.

Image USGS/CVO Alaskan Volcano Observatory.

Katmai/Novarupta is currently coded as a GREEN volcano, as such it is not deemed to be close to an eruption according to USGS/CVO Alaskan Volcano Observatory.

The current increase in activity is interesting, but my guess is that this is not the run up to an eruption. Instead I interpret this as a magmatic emplacement into the volcanic system. Something that could lead to an eruption in the future.

USGS/CVO Alaskan Volcano Observatory. Higher resolution image of the earthquakes. The large red blob are the current quake-swarm.

And even if there would be an eruption it would not be on the scale of the 1912 Novarupta eruption due to the magmatic system being severely damaged in the previous eruption. An eruption now would most likely be in the VEI-2 to VEI-3 range.

USGS/AVO-site with webicorder and webcam:

http://www.avo.alaska.edu/volcanoes/volcinfo.php?volcname=Katmai

Image by GeoLurking. On this perspective plot one can see a small stack of earthquakes forming below Katmai. It starts at around 30km and goes upwards. The stack is still not highly defined due to the low number of earthquakes. An earthquake stack like this is normaly associated with the “feeder tube” of a volcano as new magma is entering the system. For further plots by GeoLurking look in the comments. For larger view click on the image.

CARL

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

Bezymianny – Not so anonymous

Photograph by Alexander Belousov. In a 2005 photo the blackened cone of Novy peers out over the jagged walls of the crater created by the 1956 Bezymianny blast.

Picture the scene: an intrepid 19th Century Russian cartographic team is exploring the wilds of the Kamchatka peninsula, driven by a desire to map and record every feature. Armed with instruments and drawing boards they set up camp in the central valley. As they survey the mountains around them they point to one and ask their local guide, “And what is that one called?” The local man answers them with a ‘who cares’ shrug – it’s just a meaningless medium-sized mountain where nothing has ever happened. “I don’t know,” he says, and shuffles off. And so, because every feature must have a label, it is recorded on their map as ‘Bezymianny’ – ‘without a name’.

OK, that’s a flight of fantasy driven by schoolboy tales of when British explorers set out around the world. Lake Nyasa, for instance, almost certainly received its name in similar fashion. “What’s the name of this?” asks David Livingstone. “Nyasa!” reply the bemused locals, giving their language’s word for ‘a lake’. (In my imagination they answered along the lines of, “Duh, what’s it look like. It’s a lake, mate. Are you thick or what?” – and before anyone mentions it, the story of “kangaroo” being Aboriginal for “I don’t know” is not true!)

Photograph by Alexander Belousov. Two and a half giants of the Kliuchevskaya group. Erupting in the foreground is the magnificent Kliuchevskoy itself, while puffing away in the distance is ‘baby’ Bezymianny. In between stands the jagged, silent form of Kamen, itself a victim of a massive collapse.

In truth I do not know how Bezymianny came to get its ‘name’, but it is perhaps understandable that it was overlooked, as it is overshadowed by its giant near-neighbours, Kamen and Kliuchevskoy. At 4835 m Kliuchevskoy is Asia’s tallest volcano, and also one of the most active. Over 6,000 years it has built itself into a frighteningly beautiful edifice of near-perfect conical proportions – every schoolchild’s idea of a volcano. Kamen stands 4585 m tall, although it was probably once even higher. Around 1,200 years ago it suffered a catastrophic flank collapse, but has lain dormant since around that time.

These two, along with Ushkovsky/Plovsky and Bezymianny, are the main features of the Kliuchevskaya group in central Kamchatka. This is a classic subduction volcanic area, its andesitic magmas produced as a result of the diving of the Pacific plate under the Okhotsk plate where they meet some 200 km to the east.

Prehistory

According to the GVP http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=1000-25= Bezymianny ‘was formed about 4700 years ago over a late-Pleistocene lava-dome complex and an ancestral volcano [Pra Bezymianny] that was built between about 11,000-7000 years ago.’ There were periods of activity around 4,700, 3,500 and 2,500 years ago, the latter a VEI 4 event. Sporadic events continued until around the year 950, when another VEI 4 brought activity to a halt, at least on a human timescale.

For the next thousand years the ‘nameless’ mountain slept. It had reached a height of 3085 m, and was a fairly typical stratovolcano formation of andesitic rock.

Photograph by Boris I. Piip, via KVERT website. Sadly this small image was the only one I could find of Bezymianny before the 1956 event. Piip was a pioneer of Kamchatkan volcanology.

Bezymianny’s awakening

At the end of September 1955 a swarm of earthquakes began underneath Bezymianny. They were recorded by a series of seismographs that had been installed by the Soviets in the late 1940s, primarily to observe the nearby and highly active Kliuchevskoy. A volcanic observatory had already been established at the village of Klyuchi in 1935.

After 23 days of earthquakes Bezymianny began erupting on 22 October with a series of explosive events. A crater of around 800 m diameter formed at the top, and a dome began to build in the crater as the eruption continued into November. On 22 January a worrying sign was spotted by observers in an aircraft: the southeastern flank of the mountain was beginning to bulge outwards. At the same time, analysis of photographs showed that the cone in that area was uplifting as magma intruded into a cryptodome.

In early 1956 seismic and eruptive activity began to decrease as internal pressure increased, the bulge continued to grow and the southeast section of the cone continued to lift. By late March it was estimated to have reached 100 m of deformation.

On the 30th of the month the inevitable happened. At around 17:05 an estimated 0.5 km3 of the eastern flank collapsed and the side of the mountain came crashing down. As the structure failed, it released the monumental pressure that had built up inside, fed by gas-rich magma from the bulging cryptodome.

As the mountain’s side slipped away, forming a devastating avalanche of rock, a cataclysmic blast blew out towards the east, flattening trees more up to 25 km away and spreading blast deposits out to more than 30 km. Following the blast Bezymianny continued to erupt violently, creating an ash plume that reached an altitude of nearly 40 km. Pyroclastic flows surged eastwards, following the rubble avalanche from the flank collapse. Subsequently lahars formed in the waterways at lower elevations.

Does this sound a bit familiar? It should do, for the 1956 Bezymianny blast was mirrored in many ways by that of Mt St Helens in May 1980. Subsequent research at both sites has shown that the deposits produced by these directed blast surges are very similar – and unlike any others found elsewhere. Stratigraphy showed typical deposits of pre-climactic ash, overlaid with flank collapse debris, above which were directed blast deposits, and finally pyroclastic surge and fallout deposits on top.

Bezymianny’s awakening was classed as a VEI 5 event, and produced an estimated 2.8 km3 of tephra. It left a giant crater in the side of the mountain measuring 1.3 x 2.8 km. Thanks to the sparsely populated terrain of Kamchatka, there were no recorded fatalities.

Photograph by G.S. Gorshkov, via KVERT website. Taken in August 1956 this view from the east reveals the sheer extent of the blast on 30 March, which blew out a massive horseshoe crater. Already the new dome in the crater’s centre is growing strongly. Compare this photo with one of Mount St Helens circa 1982 – the two scenes are uncannily similar.

Bezymianny rebuilds

Bezymianny’s first eruption for a millennium continued for another year before coming to a halt on 1 March 1957. By then, however, there were clear signs that the volcano was not going to sleep. In the vast crater left behind by the flank collapse and directed blast, a dome had begun to grow in the weeks after the blast. This became the centre of activity for the volcano as it rose from the ashes of its cataclysmic collapse.

For observers the wait for further dome-building events was not long, a small explosive/eruptive event occurring on 31 July. Since then the mountain has been highly active, erupting over 50 times. The most recent event occurred in March 2012.

Photograph by G.S. Gorshkov, via KVERT webiste. A year on from the cataclysm and the Novy dome is building fast. Gorshkov led the analysis of the 1956 event, determining the mechanics by which the blast had occurred.

Most of the eruptions have been small explosive events accompanied by varying degrees of lava extrusion and pyroclastic surges. Some have lasted for a day or two, others for months. In the early years solid obelisks were extruded, along with fine ash.

Since 1965 activity has been concentrated at the vent in the upper part of the dome and plastic lava has become more of a feature as the viscosity of the magma has gradually reduced over time. From around this time the larger explosive events also caused portions of the upper dome to collapse in their early stages, although subsequent lava extrusions have generally ‘healed the wounds’. The most explosive event since the 1956 eruption occurred in 1985, and produced a smaller directed blast surge triggered by a partial dome collapse. In this case the pyroclastic flows reached a distance of 12.5 km.

Photograph by Alexander Belousov. Volcanologists watch as a pyroclastic flow surges down the northeast flank of Bezymianny during the 1985 eruption, its direction channelled to the east by the northern wall of the old crater.

The topographical effect of these events has been to build up the central cone, which was christened simply ‘Novy’ (‘new’ – these Russians sure have a vivid imagination when it comes to naming). In fifty-plus years the rise of Novy has been nothing short of spectacular, and it now almost fills the area of the crater left behind after the 1956 blast. Photographs provide a graphic illustration of the growth of the cone.

Novy now stands at 2882 m, not far short of Bezymianny’s pre-1956 level. The height of the central cone has long surpassed that of the crater walls in which it has grown. If the ongoing eruptions continue, Bezymianny will have soon built itself back up to the size it was before the blast.

Photograph by Alexander Belousov. Up close and personal with one of the most dangerous volcanoes on the planet. This view, looking up at Novy’s steaming cone, reveals numerous layers of pyroclastic and lava deposits.

What happens now? The short answer, of course, is that no-one knows. Bezymianny could continue to grow past its original size into a Kliuchevskoy-like monster. However, just a look at the photographs of the steep-sided Novy cone, supported to an extent on three sides by the old crater but open to the east, and it is easy to imagine that another major flank collapse could occur at any time.

Bezymianny’s explosive potential – and its uncanny similarities to Mount St Helens (with its own slower-growing dome) – make it one of the most watched volcanoes in the world, especially since a comprehensive system of seismometers and GPS instruments was installed after a sizeable event in 2006. These allow the detailed monitoring of quakes and tremor, and also the development of any deformities. The volcano is routinely monitored from space to show up thermal anomalies on the surface, which have proven to be a good indicator of imminent activity.

Both Russian and US scientists are watching closely – what is happening to Bezymianny in double-quick time today could very well be the destiny of the more dangerously located Mount St Helens, albeit over a more leisurely timescale.

Acknowledgment: I would like to extend a special thanks to Alexander Belousov at the IVS in Petropavlovsk, who has kindly given permission for his photos to be used. Papers that he co-authored with Marina Belousova and other colleagues also provided much of the information for this short article. For those who may be interested in the deeper ‘science’ bit, notably the examination and research of Bezymianny’s pyroclastic deposits, many of the papers can be viewed at: http://www.kscnet.ru/ivs/lavdi/staff/belousov/litinter.html#public For current photos, webcams and information on Bezymianny and other Kamchatkan volcanoes, see KVERT at http://www.kscnet.ru/ivs/kvert/index_eng.php

UKVIGGEN

*I must state that, in terms of volcanology, I am still in infant’s school, and I stand in awe at the level of information presented here by many of the contributors. However, the recent activity at Bezymianny led me to read up some more about this volcano, and would like to have a go at sharing my fascination. What grabs my interest the most is the rapidity with which the volcano has rebuilt itself. The volcanic processes that are ongoing often take centuries or longer, but such is the level of activity that in Bezymianny’s case the process has been witnessed over a matter of decades, and can be visualized through photographs – no imagination necessary!