Geology Picture of the Week, Sept. 16-22, 2007: Volcanic Fissure Opens In Ethiopia (and a bonus)

NASA Earth Observatory and USGS Hawaii Volcano Observatory | July 2007 | NASA, USGS

[cogitator]

Two things: one, in August a fissure eruption took place in the highly active African Rift Valley in Ethiopia. It was initially detected as a cloud of sulfur dioxide gas.

Not a whole lot of pictures of this place; it's described as an "uplifted segment of a mid-ocean ridge spreading center". So an eruption here is like seeing what happens normally deep in the ocean. Here's the view from space.

and two, I discovered this very cool time-lapse movie of the recent short-lived lava lake in the Pu'u O'o crater of Kilauea. Very fun to watch.

Episode 57 West Vent Drainback

[cogitator]

Now, below is the link to the June 2007 issue of the Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network, the most recent issue available (and some great pictures). The Manda Hararo story, and also a sad story about the landslide that wiped out half of the geysers in Kamchatka's Geyser Valley (no human loss of life, fortunately), are in the July 2007 issue, which is probably 3207. Not available as a PDF yet, but it will have pictures of both of these events. So you could bookmark this link and try it again several days from now to see if the new issue is available.

http://www.volcano.si.edu/reports/bulletin/pdf/3206bull.pdf

[cogitator]

** ping **

[geezerwheezer]

Scary looking, ain’t it?

[NRA2BFree]

That was an amazing view in the clip! Thanks for the ping! :)

[Robert A Cook PE]

Noted.

[Fred Nerks]

would you include me on your ping list please?

[notpoliticallycorewrecked]

Got to fly over the Pu’u O’o crater in a helicopter last November.

First we flew over the area where the lava was flowing into the ocean. Then the pilot then headed inland to give us a good look at the Pu’u O’o crater . The crater had a skylight with red lava flowing deep inside. The flight was the best part of the Hawaii trip.

[cogitator]

The July issue of the Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network is up. Link below is to the online HTML version; go to the main page, http://www.volcano.si.edu/, and look under "Volcanic Activity Reports" to get to the PDF, if you want it. The pictures of Manda Hararo aren't great, but they give an idea. Apparently the eruption fissures were over an area 5-7 km long. And I'm still sad about the Kamchatka geysers.

Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network (July 2007)