Skip to content
Guest Thinkers

SI/USGS Weekly Volcano Activity Report for 8/12-18/2009

The weekly update on volcanic activity presented by the Smithsonian and the USGS.

Busy today with scouting out some field location for the class I’ll be teaching this fall. Here’s this week’s USGS/SI Weekly Volcano Report. The report is a little more eventful than last week’s, so enjoy!


nn


nKliuchevskoi Volcano in Kamchatka, taken summer of 2009 by Theresa Kayzar.

nnHighlights include:n

    n
  • Three volcanoes on the Kamchatka Peninsula are currently producing ash plumes: Kliuchevskoi, Koryaksky and Shiveluch. Shiveluch has been having the most intense eruptions, but the former two are both producing ash-and-steam plumes that reach over 3 km / 10,000 feet.
  • n

  • Talang in Indonesia saws its warning level raised from 2 to 3, with a 3-km exclusion zone set to prevent tourists from getting too close.
  • n

  • Minor amounts of ash were produced by Popocatépetl, near Mexico City.
  • n

  • It seems that Pagan in the Mariana Islands had a brief eruption, as satellite observations detected a 2-hour-long “thermal anomaly” last week.
  • n

  • Reventador in Ecuador produced a new lava flow that was accompanied by seismic tremors, volcanic bombs and ash plumes.

Related

Up Next
I chime in on some of the discussions about caldera-forming eruptions and inflation of volcanoes in the Andes. Also, news on the stimulus money to volcano monitoring and "our island blew up."