VPOW – a better acronym-word than APOD, with an awesome photo subject, but not quite as cool because it’s only updated once per week.

VPOW stands for Volcano Picture Of the Week (whereas APOD is Astronomy Picture Of the Day run by NASA). This week’s image is of Ol Doinyo Lengai, which, those of you that bother to read my ramblings, is the carbonitite volcano I wrote a bit about last week.

Ol Doinyo Lengai, Tanzania. This volcano is the world's only active carbonitite volcano. Courtesy of VPOW and taken by Björn Hannes Mattsson.

This picture was taken in May of this year and, according to @VOLCANO on facebook, the East African Rift (where the continent is dividing!) has become more active recently.  Ol Doinyo Lengai has not (yet) erupted, but another volcano in Eritrea has: Nabro volcano, on the border with Ethiopia. A wonderful article from Irish Weather Online and a map-filled video by earthquake-report.com give you the details, but basically, this eruption was preceded by a series of earthquakes (like this one) at the volcano and then proceded to shoot a 13.5 km plume into the air. I have heard of no casualties and this plume has already impacted air traffic (poor, Hillary Clinton).

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This is just a quick update relating VPOW to a past post and giving you more eruption news from around the world. Speaking of, the volcano in Chile, which I now seem to understand IS actually Puyehue, is still going strong, interrupting air traffic, spreading its ash all around the southern hemisphere, and making pretty images and ashy videos and musically-themed videos of images. Also, here’s a funny cartoon about it:

This is Katie, signing out.

I am pleased to report that two three volcanoes of the world – particularly of the eastern Pacific plate boundary – have started to erupt this weekend!

The first, at least the first that I heard of it, was the Cordon Caulle volcanic chain in Patagonia in Chile. You can read about it here (awesome picture), here (video), here (video), and here. Officials originally thought that Puyehue volcano was involved, but it turns out that the eruption is some 4 kilometers from that specific volcano. Saturday morning brought up to 230 tremors per hour and the volcano was put on alert. The initial height of the eruption column was reported to be ~10 kilometers (~6 miles) and this website, maintained by the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, predicts where the ash might go, if given the initial eruption column height – it’s pretty cool. 3,500 people have so far been evacuated from around the volcano and I have not found any injuries or deaths to report (yet). The ash has drifted east into Argentina, causing the tourist town, San Carlos de Bariloche, to close its airport. Authorities have warned residents of San Carlos de Bariloche and other cities downwind to prepare for prolonged ashfall… The Cordon Caulle volcanic chain has not erupted since 1990 and resides ~1,000 km or ~620 miles south of Chile’s capital, Santiago.

The second volcano I heard erupted is Popocatepetl, familiarly and affectionately called “Popo” by volcanologists, just 37 miles southeast of Mexico City, Mexico. You can read about this eruption here (video) and here. The 3,450-meter-high (17,886 feet) volcano shook for several minutes before spewing ash, which first drifted west and then back east over Puebla City. This ash cloud is reportedly the largest in many years, though authorities claim that no major populations centers are currently in danger (even Puebla) and are watching this eruption closely, warning people to stay at least 7 miles away from the volcano. Popo is a very active volcano, with 15 major eruptions since the arrival of the Spanish in 1519.

Finally, in researching Cordon Caulle and Popo, I came across an Australian article that said that access to Mount Yasur volcano on Tanna Island in Vanuatu was closed due to strong explosions and emissions from all three of Yasur’s vents. The alert is currently at level three (presumably out of four), though no one is in immediate danger, because there is a lot of ash falling on the crater rim and Yasur is an accessible, frequently-visited volcano.

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In other cool volcano news, NatGeo posted an article about photographing, climbing, and studying a natrocarbonitite volcano in Tanzania – Ol Doinyo Lengai. This volcano is not a “normal,” silicic volcano like most people talk about, but its lavas are predominantly composed of  sodium carbonate, which gives the landscape an otherworldly appearance. Its lavas have similar features to those of silicic volcanoes, but erupt at much lower temperatures of ~500°C (or ~1000°F) than silicic volcanoes (basalt erupts at 1100-1200°C). One may still find pahoehoe/`a`a style lava flows, as well as fountains and spatter cones (hornitos), but these are generally on a much smaller scale. Be sure to check out the whole article, too (it’s not much longer).

And if you need your Hawai`i fix, I found an article that gives an overview (and the videos!) of the recent Pu`u `O`o activity and Kamoamoa eruption I described in my last post.

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So, what does all this activity say about the end of the world?

[***UPDATE***]

Since posting, many other news/science sites have posted articles, pictures, and videos of Chile. Most notably, BBC and Le Figaro from France have beautiful, high-quality images. Additionally, Forbes and Adelaide Now posted an article, and here is a blog in French with some pictures. There are also videos posted on youtube.

I have recently rediscovered the desire to selfishly post my thoughts and doings on this blog for others (who care) to read.

An update on me: I am most of the way through my first year as a masters student at the University of Oregon. I continue to study physical volcanology and my thesis project focuses on the eruption of Cinder Cone in Lassen Volcanic National Park, California. But more on all of that later – let’s talk about Hawai`i.

I have missed my time on the Big Island, learning hula, finding friends, and knowing Kilauea. Currently, the hole in the summit holds a deep lava lake and Pu`u `O`o has been very active – filling and draining a lava lake. Please watch this awesome video of filling/draining cycles taken with a thermal camera – it will make you want to be there. Another totallywickedawesome event (that will make you want to have been there) happened back in March of this year when the floor of Pu`u `O`o collapsed and a new fissure broke out to the southwest of Pu`u `O`o. This new fissure system, beginning on 5 March, became the Kamoamoa fissure system/eruption and lasted for only a few days. By 10 March, there was only fume, no lava flows. Still, though, the eruption included low lava fountains, spatter ramparts, giant cracks in the ground, and long lava flows that created forest fires. I don’t believe anyone or anything was injured or destroyed (besides some trees, but who likes biology anyway? ).

If you are interested, check out the daily Eruption Update for Kilauea’s most recent happenings and HVO’s Kilauea Images page has so many cool pictures and video, for the intrepid volcano investigator (which is where I found the links above).

Another purpose of this post is to *briefly* describe a new theory on why Hawai`i exists. The current generally accepted theory is that intraplate volcanism is created by mantle plumes that form hot spots on the surface of the earth. Mantle plumes are upwellings of hot magma (or almost magma) from somewhere deep within the mantle that melt and erupt when they reach the surface, forming island chains like Hawai`i in the middle of tectonic plates. These plumes are assumed to be stationary (not necessarily a good assumption) and conduit-like. Cao et al. (2011) in a recent article in Science argues that “conduit-like” may not be an appropriate description. This article will explain it for you, but the basic idea is that the authors used seismic waves and how they are reflected and refracted within the earth to take a “picture” of the subsurface beneath Hawai`i and its surrounding area. This picture (or “these pictures” is more accurate) shows a “thermal anomaly” (as in, a hot or cold body that’s not “supposed” to be where we find it, something unexpected) that is 800-1,200 kilometers wide, not a conduit-like feature as hypothesized by the mantle plume theory. The authors’ proposed idea is that the warm mantle rises and accumulates at a transition zone, or mineralogical boundary, in the mantle (similar to how magma that feeds subduction zone volcanoes is sometimes hypothesized to pool beneath the crust and then rise up and erupt). This warm mantle then gets taken up and erupted as Hawaiian volcanoes.

This is an important finding (though those that know what they are talking about have argued that there is too much error in the data used in this interpretation) because geologists use island tracks to reconstruct tectonic plate movements of the past. If this hypothesis turns out to be more consistent with the data already collected and yet to be collected, these island tracks may not be as useful to us as signs of a shifting plate. But, as always, more data is still necessary to make one or the other the dominant theory. And, as always, it may turn out to be neither or both; such is the progression, quandary, and beauty of science.

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I hope to reawaken this blog and post volcanologic articles/pictures/videos/etc. that I find thought-provoking and/or totallywickedawesome. I hope to use this blog to think deeper about aspects of volcanology and to brainstorm about my current and future research. I hope to also challenge you, reader, with questions of my own and I welcome any ideas, questions, and criticisms – my view on science is that it is collaborative, open, and respectful.

So, until something else strikes me as blog-provoking, may the earth-fire be with you.

I am recently back from a month-long tour through western Europe with a Hawai`i friend (follow Sidney Penguin through our adventures – coming soon) and thought I’d check in briefly once again.

Next week I will return to working as an Interviewing Specialist for Pinstripe, Inc.  It is a great company to work for and I love my coworkers.  Considering it is so far removed from all of my previous education, I am learning a lot that I think will be valuable for what I want to do in the future – I want to study and teach people about volcanoes.  Doing so, requires the ability to communicate well with others and this job is really teaching me to do that.  I am learning about running a business and what levels of communication and commitment go into making a venture successful.  So overall, I enjoy going to work and I enjoy learning at work.

In other news, I got into my grad school of choice – the University of Oregon in Eugene, OR – and I will be working in the volcanology group of the geology department.  I am so excited to go and will start in September of this year.  (Will hopefully start to blog again with the adventures of a volcanology grad student…)

For fun, I watch NHL ice hockey, now in the semifinal series of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.  My current celebrity idol is a hockey player for the Pittsburgh Penguins, Sidney Crosby, whose dedication has guilted me into exercising almost daily.  Unfortunately, the Penguins lost their quarterfinal series against the Montreal Canadiens, who were doing spectacularly well for the 8th seeded team in the Eastern Conference, but I enjoy the game and the other teams enough to still watch the games obsessively.  For all you Penguin/Crosby haters out there: don’t judge.  Whatever you may think about Crosby, you can’t deny that he is an awesome player and your negative feelings probably stem from jealousy anyways.  Besides, who needs more hate in the world?

But I digress.  Once my pictures are organized, I will give you a tour through what SS and I saw in Europe, with Sidney Penguin as your guide.

Not that the geology’s not interesting here…it just can’t hold a flame to volcanoes.  Sorry, sedimentologists.  I am now working on my graduate school applications, masquerading as a part-time marketing analyst at Pinstripe, and hoping the remote sensing exploration job in the Middle East makes it through.

On my off-time, I want to get all of my pictures and videos from Hawai`i organized, and hopefully (this is a big IF), fill in some of the lost weeks this blog.  And also, make a movie montage.  I also spend down time catching up on fun TV shows with the sister (Supernatural and Avatar) and catching fun happenings around Milwaukee, WI with the cousin.

I will continue with this blog when my next adventure starts and will maybe post updates now and again (but I wouldn’t hold your breath if I were you).  But if you just can’t get enough of me, because, let’s face it, I’m awesome, then catch me on these sites: Facebook – Twitter – LinkedIn

Until the future, I hope you find what it is you are searching for.

Katie: OUT.

Tonight, at After Dark in the Park, an evening program put on by Hawai`i Volcanoes National Park, the park hosted a slack-key guitarist by the name of John Keawe and his wife, Hope, and granddaughters, Naomi and Shelly (don’t know exactly about those spellings).  Slack-key comes from the middle 1800′s when the Portuguese cowboys brought over to help control the cattle of the island also brought over their guitars.  They shared their cattle control knowledge as well as their instruments and the Hawaiians adapted their own style of music.  The term slack-key comes from the Hawaiian tuning of the guitar — the strings are looser than on a standard guitar.  The style of play is also different, and quite beautiful.

Tonight, Mr. Keawe and his family were absolutely brilliant, quite funny, and enthralling.  His wife is a beautiful hula dancer and their young grandchildren danced along.  The final song of the concert, aside of the encore, is apparently a seasonal favorite.  No wonder, since no one on this island knows what a partridge is.  Even I didn’t know when I was little and I claim mainlander status.  So here is The Twelve Days of Christmas…Hawaiian (and John Keawe) style.  [Note: tutu means grandma.]

A few minutes ago, at 05:32, I woke up to a magnitude 2.7 earthquake that occurred approximately 1 kilometer (~2/3 mile) east of Kilauea summit (though it looks like it’s still beneath the caldera) and approximately 1.6 kilometers (~1 mile) deep.  The door was rattling and my bed was probably shaking for a couple of seconds – it was pretty cool.  The last time I was in one was six or seven years ago when I lived in Ecuador (and that one was actually quite scary).  Both Lauren and I woke up and then we checked the vent to see if anything happened to it.  Bunch of nerds we are. 

To find out more about earthquake happenings here, check out the recent earthquake page from the HVO website.

I will be posting something more soon – there’s lava in the summit vent!

At 03:13 on 17 September 2009, a seismic event occurred that triggered an explosion from Halema`uma`u, on Kilauea’s summit.  HVO has posted some very cool images and video on their website and I will take you on a tour through them.

First, there is a video of the event captured perfectly on the low-light camera trained on the vent from HVO (so looking south-ish).  The glowing bits are lava spatter being ejected – some of them fly higher than the rim of Halema`um`u approximately 85 meters from the floor of the crater.  The lava surface is estimated at about 280 meters below Halema`uma`u floor.  You can also see the the plume gets darker in color from the ash also coming out during the explosion.  Pretty cool, huh?  This image was taken from the webcam by the Halema`uma`u overlook on the rim of the crater and just above the vent and looking directly into it.  It also shows the ejected spatter, but from a different angle.

That afternoon, my supervisor TO and I went into the caldera to collect samples of the fresh lava that was ejected onto the caldera floor during the event.  These samples will be added to a suite of geochemical data to track the evolution of Kilauea’s magma.

Kilauea Status Update…ala Katie!

I went on the overflight this past week (also Thursday morning), so here are some pictures and a tour of how Kilauea’s been doing.

SUMMIT

All quiet on Kilauea's summit (except for the 03:13 explosion that morning). Mauna Loa rises to the right of this picture. View to the NW. Photo by USGS.

After the explosion, the overlook vent in Halema`uma`u continues to outgas thick white fume. For a better look into the vent, check out this video taken from the helicopter with a thermal camera. It shows four outgassing pukas on the surface inside the vent. North is approximately up. Photo by USGS.

KAPOHO

We flew out to Kapoho, on the southeastern tip of the island, to check out rumors of an eruption there (false, it turns out). This is the southern-ish coastline as we were flying back towards the ocean entry, which you can see the plume form in the very far background. View to W-ish. Photo by USGS.

PU`U `O`O and the TEB VENT

Pu`u `O`o continues to fume away as well. No major activity from this vent directly. View to WNW. Photo by USGS.

View to NW of Pu`u `O`o in the background and the TEB vent with its shields and tubes coming towards us. The TEB vent is feeding the breakouts, tube, and ocean entry. Photo by USGS.

FLOW FIELDS

The flow field is relatively quiet, with only one smaller breakout towards the top of the pali. In this photo, the fume traces the lava tube that is feeding Waikupanaha. The active breakout is near the uppermost fuming bit. View to NW. Photo by USGS.

Aerial view of the active breakout (the shiny stuff). Many of the upper-pali breakout come from this spot because the tube makes a bend. View to NNW. Photo by USGS.

We landed to get a lava sample and we encountered this pahoehoe toe. View to NW. Photo by USGS.

And this is what the same pahoehoe toe looked like when we left. I have a video of it - it was pretty dramatic. View to NW. Photo by USGS.

WAIKUPANAHA

Waikupanaha remains the only ocean entry, though there are two spots on the bench where the lava is flowing into the ocean. North is approximately up. Photo by USGS.

The glow of the Waikupanaha plume at maybe 05:30. View to ESE. Photo by USGS.

The lava that enters the ocean at Waikupanaha (which means ‘mysterious water’ in Hawaiian) comes from the ongoing Pu`u `O`o eruption that started in 1983.  This particular lava actually comes from the TEB vent that opened in 2007 to the ESE of the Pu`u `O`o vent.  That lava that feeds Waikupanaha travels there through a tube.  A tube is very efficient way of transporting lava (pahoehoe) very long distances; this lava travels over 10 kilometers and loses only about 10˚C.

Closer to sunrise now and view to ESE. You can see the two lava streams that formed and died while we were there. Photo by USGS.

Lava is very dynamic and can change very quickly.  So while we were watching this entry, the two lava streams seen in the above picture were formed and subsequently cooled and became inactive over the course of 30 – 45 minutes while we were there.  That’s one of the things I like about lava and volcanoes – their changeability.

Another picture of the streams we saw on the bench, because they're cool. View to ESE. Photo by USGS.

There.  Now you have more nice pictures of lava (at night even!).  I also took a couple of videos, but can’t post those.  There were a couple of small explosions that I couldn’t capture in a still, but on the videos.

As Nina and Benny sing, “Anything at all can happen just before the sunrise…” (In the Heights)

Shelly pahoehoe on Mauna Loa.

The point of this post is to share a song with you.  A girl from the CSAV class told me once that she and some friends came up with a song about shelly pahoehoe.  I couldn’t remember the words, so I made up my own.  Please sing this to the tune of the chorus of “Build Me Up, Buttercup”…

Hold Me Up, Shelly P.