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Terrestrial Volcanoes

© Patrice Bentham

Recently in the news, we have witnessed the spectacular eruption of Mount Etna in Italy. Mount Etna is Europe's most active and highest (rising 10,860 feet above Sicily) volcano. Volcanic eruptions can be destructive and cause lost of life. The USGS site, Volcano Hazards Program http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/ , outlines the various hazards associated with volcanoes and their effects. Each hazard - gases, lahars, landslides, lava flows, pyroclastic flows and tephra are defined and discussed in detail. Case studies illustrating the hazards are also considered.

But can good come from an eruption? Another USGS web site, Cascades Volcano Observatory - Living With Volcanoes http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/LivingWith/fra... , answers yes. The section The "Plus Side" of Volcanoes outlines benefits of volcanism such as a source of metallic minerals and the breakdown of volcanic materials to form fertile soils. This is an interesting site. It has a section, which could be termed "volcano trivia". Here you will find references to volcanoes in myths and legends, movies, TV and fiction. Want to become a Volcanologist- someone who studies volcanoes? Learn what it take to become one along with how volcanoes are studied. The site also hosts web cams of various volcanoes situated around the world including Mount Etna.

Interested in knowing how many volcanoes there are in the world and where they are located? Good! A visit to the Smithsonian Institute's Global Volcanism Program, http://www.volcano.si.edu/gvp/ , will answer that question. Here, volcanoes that have erupted in the last 10,000 years are catalogued alphabetically and geographically with an accompanying map. The database houses approximately 1500 entries.

There are numerous web sites where one can learn more about the science of volcanoes. A good place to start is Volcanoes, http://www.learner.org/exhibits/volcanoe... , an Annenberg/CPB Exhibit. Then continue on to Scholastic's The Mighty Volcano, http://teacher.scholastic.com/fieldtrp/s... . This site will take you by the hand and lead you to other sites to learn how volcanoes form and why they erupt. Then you will tour a few located in the States. Nova Online, a PBS web site, Born of Fire, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/hawaii/ , takes a look at lava from Hawaiian volcanoes though interviews with various geologists. Another Nova site Deadly Shadow of Vesuvius, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/vesuvius/ , a companion site for the TV show, is of interest for two reasons. First, there is a discussion about predicting eruptions. Can they be predicted? Second, we are told how the size of an eruption is measured. Just as the size of an earthquake is measured using the Richter Scale, volcanic eruptions are measured using Volcanic Explosivity Index, or VEI. The scale ranges from 0, for a small, non-explosive, variable duration eruption, to 10 for a very large explosive eruption with the explosion lasting 12 hours or more. The scale is logarithmic i.e. an eruption of 6 would be about 10 times more explosive than an eruption of 5. Mount St. Helens measured 5 on the VEI scale. For a more detailed look at volcanoes, visit How Volcanoes Work, http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoe... . This site is written on a university level. It is quite comprehensive, covering topics such as eruption types, landforms and the products of eruptions. There is a test at the end of each section to help determine how well one has understood the material.