AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Most recent volcano eruption 201811/7/2023 She measures the concentrations of trace elements to determine whether a lava sample is fresh or evolved-and if it is evolved, just how evolved it might be. Gansecki works mostly as a laboratory researcher analyzing samples, including many of those captured from Kīlauea’s outpourings. Volcanologists call this aged magma “differentiated” or “evolved.” As it cools, certain minerals precipitate out as crystals, leaving behind a liquid that is richer in the remaining elements and depleted of the elements in the crystallized minerals. A Surprising SampleĪs a batch of magma sits in the ground under a volcano, it begins to cool. They raced against time to capture samples of new lava before yet another variety of lava came along and obliterated all traces of what had surfaced not long before. In the heat of what many are calling a once-in-a-lifetime event, scientists were driven to build a collection of lava samples whose chemistry could help tell the story of the volcano’s historic transformation. Over the late spring and summer, HVO teams amassed bag after bag of volcanic rubble, some of it drawn hot from fresh flows, some scoured from tree branches spat upon by the eruption, more just picked up from the ground after it had rained down, and some chipped from solidified flows. Now that Kīlauea has settled down, a history of what transpired remains, written in stone. Sitting in the lab is USGS HVO geologist Lopaka Lee. Volcanologists collected the samples from the lower East Rift Zone, where many fissures opened unexpectedly in the spring and summer. Such a change requires emergency crews to deploy more quickly and widely and possibly to carry out additional evacuations.īags of Kīlauea lava samples await analysis on a lab bench at HVO this past June. Such markers mean the eruption is about to become much faster and more voluminous. Most critically for public safety, from the time the volcano abruptly changed on 3 May, volcanologists watched for chemical clues that younger, hotter lava was arriving on the scene. For one, lab studies of the traits of the fresh, glassy volcanic rock can give clues to what’s coming next in an eruption. Building a Rock RecordĪs dangerous as lava samples are to retrieve, they provide valuable rewards. In the 46-second video below, a Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) geologist scoops up and quenches a bucket’s worth of lava last year from that Pu‘u O‘o vent. Grabbing fresh lava was one of the first things that volcano scientists did when fissures in Leilani Estates, an area on Kīlauea’s eastern flank that is historically less volcanically active than other areas, suddenly and dramatically began spewing lava in what became a long-unseen type of eruption on 3 May.įor the previous 35 years, the volcano had been reliably releasing lava from a vent called Pu‘u O‘o that lies 21 kilometers (13 miles) from those newly opened fissures. The plunge froze it into glass, preventing the chemical alterations and crystallization that would occur if the lava cooled slowly. “You’re watching for to fall kind of close to you, then running in and grabbing it and running out again.” To lock the sample into the chemical state it was in when it was collected, geologists would cool the searing blob of molten rock quickly by “quenching” it in a bucket of water. When explosive blasts and spattering lava made it too dangerous to approach the flow, scientists got as close as they could and then waited, added Gansecki, a volcanologist at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo. It just felt like everything was going to catch on fire.”įor the previous 35 years, the volcano had been reliably releasing lava from a vent called Pu‘u O‘o that lies 21 kilometers (13 miles) from the newly opened fissures. “I’ve had a couple of times when I’ve tried to sample from a flow and just couldn’t. “Imagine the hottest oven you can, sticking your head in-and it’s hotter than that,” volcanologist Cheryl Gansecki said, recounting what it felt like to approach active lava flows at Hawaii’s Kīlauea volcano, where the sheer volume of lava made the radiant heat extremely intense.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |