The beauty and indomitability of an erupting volcano fascinating affects both the tourist and the regular viewer of popular science channels. But people living in close proximity to volcanic cones, it was always interesting - why volcanic eruptions occur and whether it is possible to somehow stop this process.
“Stopping” a person’s volcano just doesn’t work out, but the answer to the question “why?” Is already known. In short, volcanism is the process of the emergence of magma on the surface of the earth's crust.
When a red-hot, metallized, plasma-like liquid leaves the bowels of the Earth and comes into contact with air or water, it is called “lava”. But this does not change the essence of the phenomenon. The heavy, "fiery river" incinerates everything that meets in its path. As a “bonus” Liquid Fire is accompanied by rockfalls, pyroclastic flows and solid doses of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide.
Causes of Volcanic Eruption (Volcanism)
The main cause of volcanism is the internal structure of our planet. You remember from the course of school geography that the interior of the Earth is three-layered. It includes: core, mantle, crust. The upper part of the mantle - the asthenosphere, has a liquid consistency. It is she who breaks the "fetters" of the earth's crust and periodically "creeps out" to the surface of the Earth.
Why breaks through? The earth’s crust is not continuous. It is broken into blocks. It looks like a cracked but not fallen from a hard-boiled egg shell.By the way, blocks are called lithospheric plates. They slowly glide over the metallized liquid magma - converge and diverge, collide and run over one another.
Considering that lithospheric plates are rather heavy - 5-80 km of rock mass, they exert pressure on liquid magma. Therefore, at the first opportunity - the gap appeared between the two blocks, it quickly creeps out (squeezed out) to the surface in the form of the same ones - the magical beauty of the "fire rivers".
Places of probable volcanic eruptions
Despite the indomitable nature of volcanoes, places of access to the surface of the lava have long been known. These are joints or places of interaction of lithospheric plates. Where the blocks of the earth’s crust most actively “collide” one on another or “disperse” in different directions, there magma also gets the opportunity to break out of the “dungeon”. In this geological reality, three places of active volcanism are known.
Pacific ring of fire
The so-called Pacific Ring of Fire. This is the place of interaction of the Pacific lithospheric plate with the surrounding blocks - Eurasian, Indo-Australian, Antarctic, Nazca, North American. The most active manifestations of volcanism in this zone are magma outlets in the area of the Bolshoi Sunda Islands (for example, the volcano Krakatau), the Japanese, the Kamchatka Peninsula with its Klyuchevskaya Sopka and its hundreds of “colleagues”. Plus - a lot of very active volcanoes located in the South American Andes. By the way, in order to appease the Liquid Fire, the local Indians sacrificed the most precious to him - the children of their aristocrats - leaders and priests.
Atlantic seismic belt
The Atlantic seismic belt, which includes the Canary Islands and Iceland with Eyyafyatlayokudl, which in due time blocked the air communication between the Old and New Worlds for several days.
Alpine-Himalayan seismic belt
The Alpine-Himalayan seismic belt, in which Vesuvius volcano stands out with its “exploits” and is constantly “leaking” with the fiery rivers of Etna.
Very often, the process of volcanic eruptions is accompanied by earthquakes, as well as the emergence of thermal waters on the surface, geysers, gurgling mud. But no one has succeeded in stopping volcanism or current lava.
