The Earth Story

Iguazu from above These falls illustrate a property of flood basalts (aka LIP or large igneous province), which have emerged in huge quantities from large fissures in the crust at odd intervals throughout Earth's history, often contributing to mass extinctions along the way. As eruption succeeds eruption, sometimes with a prolonged gap in between which sees the development of a soil horizon that is then covered by the next layer, they form a series of distinct layers known as trapps, from the German for steps. The Deccan (roughly 65 million years old, and a factor in the death of the dinosaurs) and the Siberian (251 million years old, and the likely cause of the end Permian mass extinction, the worst ever seen in which 'life nearly died') trapps are the world's most famous.

Timelapse of the webcam watching the Icelandic lava flow today. Watch for the people that walk along the flow front and the helicopters that fly overhead!

After several weeks of earthquakes indicating magma migration on the Reykjanes peninsula on the southwest corner of Iceland, an eruption has begun with lava at the surface and glow from it visible on this webcam.

Is waiting for a volcano better than watching paint dry? The Reykjanes Peninsula in Iceland runs off to the southwest side of the island. It's the point at which the Mid-Atlantic Ridge comes onshore, and it is above the ocean surface because of the interaction between volcanism on that ridge and the nearby Iceland Plume. The rocks, therefore, are recent volcanic rocks, and the peninsula is resurfaced by volcanism every few thousand years.

Fuego volcano, behind Acatenango, erupting at night.

Blue Dragon Lava The Craters of the Moon volcanic field in Idaho represents large outpourings of basaltic lava formed between 16000 and 2000 years ago. The full field covers an area the size of the state of Rhode Island; this is a tiny fragment of one of those lava flows, the Blue Dragon lava flow.

Drone captured hike up the slopes of Mt. Etna

The Great Rift The mountains of Idaho are split by a wide valley known as the Snake River Plain. Much of this landscape was once volcanic, as massive eruptions associated with the Yellowstone Hot Spot blasted their way across the state over the past 20 million years, flattening the mountains as you see here. Every so often, molten rock associated with the Yellowstone system finds a new path it can take up to the surface, and none have been more active recently than the Great Rift.

Fissure 8, the Cinder Cone that produced the largest lava flows in the 2018 Kilauea eruption, is still steaming and barren today. Here’s a visit.