Let’s image the simplest, most boring volcano possible. It consists of a magma balloon fed by a straw. The ground is perfectly flat above the balloon. Magma comes up the straw at a constant ...

Along the western edge of South America, the Andes Mountains encompass one of the largest concentrations of volcanoes on Earth. Many of these volcanoes are active, and in the historical record of ...

This page contains useful links and graphics for the current notable event.

The double-booked land is also known as the Afar Triangle, a low-lying region wedged into the Ethiopian Plateau. The region is not for the intrepid. The name is synonymous with remoteness. It is also ...

As the numbers for the Hunga Tonga eruption continues to come in it is becoming ever clearer that something truly momentous happened, something not seen or heard in 139 years. With a columnar height ...

This is the third article in our series of re-posts. It is well worth noticing that it was first published well ahead of the volcanic crisis at Volcan Chilles on the border between Equador and ...

Mid-oceanic rifts should be in the middle of the ocean they formed. And often they are, but there are exceptions. The Reykjanes Rift, south of Iceland, is one of these. It is well known for its ...

The summit of Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth, is a sea floor. That may come as a surprise; after all, a sea should be at sea level. In practice, there is some flexibility on this. Three ...

To me, it’s an eruption because it’s throwing rocks and it’s on a volcano. It could be phreatic or magmatic. It’s phreatic if it’s driven by heated groundwater, or magmatic gasses from an intrusion, ...

Like other natural disasters, volcanic eruptions can have an impact on civilizations. Of course they can annihilate them, but they can also contribute to their economic development by providing a ...

There are many sites in the world where dinosaur fossils have survived. Sometimes it is not the dinosaurs themselves but the impression they made which survives. Dinosaur footprints can be ...

Japan is a major economic power in the modern world. Currently, its economy is the third largest in the entire world and exceeded only by those of the USA and The Peoples Republic of China. But as ...