In this essay I will tell you about the 1886 Tarawera Eruption. More specifically I will tell you about the effects the 1886 eruption had on the natural environment and ton the local communities of the region.
10th of June 1886, soon after midnight. Mt Tarawera light up like fireworks. BOOM! Molten rock came flying out of the crater, with a cloud of ash rising 9.5km into the sky. People as far as Blenheim could hear the thunder like noises but had no idea what it could be. Although the people of Rotorua knew exactly what was happening Mount Tarawera was erupting! The Mt. Tarawera eruption was the largest eruption in New Zealand for 800 years.
Before the eruption, many people claimed to see a ghostly canoe on Lake Rotomahana. Maori say it was warning them that death is coming. The lake temperatures were also changing as well as more waves. Sadly nobody linked those back to Mt. Tarawera.
The eruption caused the land to dramatically change. In my mind I think the biggest loss would have to be the pink and white terraces. The loss of pink and white terraces was a huge blow to New Zealand's tourist industry. People around the world came to bathe in these marvels which covered a 3 ha (hectares) area and descending 30 metres, they were massive. The pink and white terraces were about to be named one of the seven wonders of the world. No tourists would want to come and see the ash over the terraces. Millions of dollars lost.
After the eruption, the region of Tarawera was covered by infertile ash. The eruption layered the volcanic ash which is very poor in nutrients. This meant that the people could no longer grow their food or graze animals. Maori used to call the central North Island “Kaingaora” Meaning Lean and hungry land. The native bushes and scrub land close to Tarawera's eruption was burnt and a lot of vegetation have never recovered. This resulted in another source of food and building materials was destroyed, making it an even harder area to live in.
For one village, Te Wairoa, was covered in ash. This meant that the people had to move and start a new village and life.
Around Tarawera the lakes and rivers became heavily polluted with ash.
The village had shutdown, the once giddy streets became grim. Flowers that once flourished in the meadows around the village wilted and rot. Death took over homes. Blissful faces became helpless.
In March 18, 1880 Mount St. Helens there was a catastrophic eruption that caused a huge volume of ash; the ash plume would be over central Colorado within 16 hours. After years of dedicated monitoring (knowing where to volcano is, unlike an earthquake not knowing exactly where this geological even is exactly) there was been increasing accuracy in forecasting eruptions.
On May 22, 1915, an explosive eruption at Lassen Peak devastated nearby areas and rained volcanic ash farther 200 miles to the east! This explosion was the most powerful in a series of eruptions from 1914 through 1917. ...
...815 eruption of Mount Tambora. With over 70,000 deaths and a rating of 7 on the volcanic exclusivity index, this eruption is one of the largest in recorded history. Not only did this volcano cause destruction in Indonesia but the consequences were further felt around the world, as volcanic ash and sulphuric gases were dumped into the stratosphere causing a global climate shift. Dark clouds covered the sun, and dramatic weather changes ensued. Flash floods frequently occurred wiping out a great deal of crop eventually causing prices to skyrocket. Disease began to spread due to malnourishment and unsanitary living conditions. Eventually these consequences subsided and citizens began to migrate towards Mount Tambora once again. Today the government has placed seismic sensors are set up in the most volatile areas to ensure preparedness in the event of another volcano.
Volcanoes have always been a mysterious wonder of the world. Volcanoes have shaped the landscape and the very ground that we all live on. People have written stories of their disastrous eruptions, and painted their marvelous shapes on canvas. The essay will outline some of the more famous volcanoes and how they have impacted are history. Mount Vesuvius that destroy the great city of Pompeii, Krakatoa they spewed deadly ash on small village town, and Mount St. Helen, the only volcano in my own country to every erupt during my own time period.
Maunaloa last erupted in 1938 and Kilauea has been erupting since January 3,1938. The Hawaii Volcanoes National Park was named a World Biosphere site by UNESCO in 1987. Kilauea is also called the world's only drive-in volcano.
The eruption on Mount Saint Helens has a specific cause and comes with many effects. A multifold of people would say that the “mountain looked like the site of an atomic blast” (Bredeson 30). That is a very accurate depiction as it took great power to inflict as much damage as it did. The reason for this impressive amount of force is that when magma is built up with pressure and an earthquake hits, the pressure gets magnified and the volcano explodes (Lewis). This is exactly what happened inside Mount Saint Helens. Furthermore, it has been revealed that “The earthquake that triggered the explosion was a 5.2 on the Richter scale” (Gunn 559). The earthquake to the magma can be compared as a match to gasoline. Even though the earthquake was not huge, the scale of the eruption was much greater than that of the earthquake (Gunn 560). The earthquake was only the trigger that allowed for more devastating things to occur. Thirteen hundred feet of the volcano were lost in the explosion followed by landslides, mudslides, and lava flows...
This cycle, which lasted until about 800 BC, is characterized by smaller volume eruptions. Mt. Saint Helens woke up on March 20, 1980, with a Richter magnitude 4 earthquake. Steam venting started on March 27. By the end of April, the north side of the mountain started to bulge.
On May 18th, 1980, one of the most prominent volcanic eruptions in US History took place in the state of Washington. Mount St. Helens had been dormant for almost 100 years before March 15th. On this day, two months before the eruption several small earthquakes shook the earth. This indicated a magma buildup below the surface, and the first minor event that would lead to one of the greatest eruptions the US has ever known. Following the first set of earthquakes, “Steam explosions blasted a 60- to 75-m (200- to 250-ft) wide crater through the volcano 's summit ice cap and covered the snow-clad southeast sector with dark ash. Within a week the crater had grown to about 400 m (1,300 ft) in diameter and two giant crack systems crossed the entire summit area. Eruptions occurred on average from
Stories about volcanoes are captivating. Myths come in different versions, but all of them are capable of capturing yours, and everybody’s imagination.
Within a thousand kilometres falling ash, lava flows and the utter explosive force of the eruption would kill practically all life. Volcanic ash would cover places as far away as Iowa and the
“...99.9 per cent of all [species] that have ever existed are now extinct.” (Benton 1) After one hundred and sixty million years of domination, the reign of the dinosaurs ended in fire and ice. Sixty five million years ago, the largest volcanoes in the history of the Earth erupted across what is now India, effectively annihilating the dinosaurs by spewing out noxious gas and ash, that effectively blocked out the sun killing off most vegetation and breaking the food chain, leaving the dinosaurs to starve. Compared to other groups of animals the dinosaurs were the most vulnerable to such a climatic event and the result was the end of the dinosaurs’ glorious evolutionary history.
Volcanoes can be one of the most destructive forces on Earth. It is estimated that some
Digging up the dirt on Mauna Loa. (Hawaiian volcano studied) Science News v144, n25-26 December 18th, 1993 414 (1 page)
Mount Vesuvius is a strato-volcano consisting of a volcanic cone (Gran Cono) that was built within a summit caldera (Mount Somma). The Somma-Vesuvius complex has formed over the last 25,000 years by means of a sequence of eruptions of variable explosiveness, ranging from the quiet lava outpourings that characterized much of the latest activity (for example from 1881 to 1899 and from 1926 to 1930) to the explosive Plinian eruptions, including the one that destroyed Pompeii and killed thousands of people in 79 A.D. At least seven Plinian eruptions have been identified in