essay about volcanoes and earthquakes

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How are volcanoes and earthquakes interrelated?

• Updated 17/11/22
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Both volcanoes and earthquakes occur due to movement of the Earth’s tectonic plates. They are both caused by the heat and energy releasing from the Earth’s core. Earthquakes can trigger volcanic eruptions through severe movement of tectonic plates. Similarly, volcanoes can trigger earthquakes through the movement of magma within a volcano. Therefore, one aspect of how are volcanoes and earthquakes interrelated is the cyclical relationship where earthquakes cause volcanic eruptions and magma movement causes earthquakes.

Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in itself are dangerous natural phenomena which poses risk to humans. Furthermore, tsunamis are an equally deadly secondary effect caused by underwater disturbances such as earthquakes, volcanic activity, landslides, underwater explosions or meteorite impacts which pose significant danger to human lives.

What are tectonic plates and how do they explain volcanoes and earthquakes?

The outer layer of the Earth is made up of solid rock, called lithosphere. The lithosphere is broken up into 17 major separate pieces that fit together like a bad jigsaw puzzle. A piece of the puzzle is called a tectonic plate . The plates are horribly placed, with overlapping pieces, gaps, and are forced to fit with each other even when they don’t. Because the tectonic plates don’t go well together, it creates earthquakes and volcanic activity when two plates collide, diverge or slide past each other.

There are three types of boundaries caused by tectonic plates on Earth: first, transform boundaries when two plates slide or grind past each other. Transform boundaries are horizontal movements of plates and do not create or destroy plates. Second, divergent boundaries when two plates create a gap in between each other. Divergent boundaries create ocean basins when plates move apart from one another. Third, convergent boundaries when two plates crash towards each other and overlap to form a subduction zone.

Tectonic plates are extremely large and can encompass both land and ocean. These tectonic plates interact with one another because of the Earth’s internal heat. This heat causes movement of material beneath the Earth’s crust and releases energy in the form of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Interactions between the tectonic plates occurs in three main places: first, oceanic-continental convergence, where the continent meets the ocean. Second, continental-continental convergence, where two continents meet. Last, oceanic-oceanic convergence, where two oceans meet.

So, how are volcanoes and earthquakes interrelated? Both volcanoes and earthquakes are caused along the boundaries of tectonic plates due to their movements and interactions.

How dangerous are volcanoes and earthquakes to humans?

How many deaths there are and how severe a natural disaster is depends on the interactions we have as humans with our environment. A strong earthquake can be completely overlooked if it happens in the middle of land where hardly any people live in, for example in December 2003, when a 6.5 magnitude earthquake in Central California killed two people. Consequently, a similar earthquake in a densely populated metropolitan area can cause many deaths, injuries and destruction of property, for example, a 6.6 magnitude earthquake in Bam, Iran killing 30,000 people, injuring 30,000 more and destroying 85% of property.

The same goes for volcanic eruptions, if an underwater volcano erupted in the middle of the ocean, it would have little impact to humans living far inland. However, if the volcano had been dormant for a significant amount of time and humans started populating the land close to the base of a volcano it would be devastating should it ever erupt. Further, indirect consequences of a volcanic eruption can have a greater impact than the eruption itself. For example, volcanic ash can induce climate change that have serious agricultural, economic, and sociological impacts on people’s lives.

Read these articles to learn more about the structure of the volcano and the internal structure of the volcano .

To find out more about where the next volcano will erupt in Australia, read this article.

Tsunamis as a result of earthquakes or volcanic activity

Tsunamis are giant waves that occur when a large volume of water is displaced. The most common causes of underwater disturbances that lead to tsunamis are earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, especially because most volcanoes are underwater. Although tsunamis can also be caused by landslides, meteorite impacts and underwater explosions. Tsunami waves travel extremely fast, with wave speeds reaching up to 900 km/h in deep water. The waves get taller the closer they reach the shoreline because of rapidly decreasing depth of the sea floor, and slow down to 20 – 50 km/h.

We can deduce that volcanoes and earthquakes are caused by tectonic plate movements, they both pose a significant danger to humans, and result in deadly secondary effects like tsunamis.

Additional Reading

https://web.archive.org/web/20120913041924/http://www.enviroliteracy.org/nsfmod/NaturesFury.pdf

https://australian.museum/blog-archive/science/earthquakes-and-tsunamis/

https://australian.museum/learn/minerals/shaping-earth/plate-tectonic-processes/

https://media.australian.museum/media/dd/Uploads/Documents/4645/volcano_structure.134d97b.pdf

https://australian.museum/learn/minerals/shaping-earth/structure-of-volcanoes/

https://australian.museum/blog-archive/science/amri-where-next-volcano-erupt-in-australia/

The Australian Museum respects and acknowledges the Gadigal people as the First Peoples and Traditional Custodians of the land and waterways on which the Museum stands.

Image credit: gadigal yilimung (shield) made by Uncle Charles  Chicka  Madden

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Earthquakes are some of the most destructive natural disasters. An earthquake consists of rapid vibration of the earth surface. Since its occurrence and enormous capacity is unpredictable by the ordinary human beings, it has been creating fear in human beings since the ancient times. A single shock would last for a few seconds, but when a series of smaller quakes occurs, it could last for about five minutes. It occurs quite frequently across the world but most of the times earthquakes are not very strong to be witnessed by people. However, huge earthquakes have devastating effects. This essay seeks to illustrate the causes and effects of earthquakes.

There are two types of earthquakes: tectonic and volcanic. Tectonic earthquakes occur when the earth is subjected to immense strain making it to eventually move. The earth crust comprises of several plates which float on the mantle. Considering that the plates can move, they can drift apart, towards each other, or slide against each other causing a subduction zone. According to Abrams & Morton (2007), convergent boundaries occur when too much pressure is generated between two plates over a long time. With time, one of the plates bends under the other due to extreme force. As much as the movement is too slow, pressure eventually builds up in the rocks. Eventually an earthquake happens when the pressure can no longer be held by the rocks. The fault ruptures causing the plates to move a long distance in a very short time. The collision triggers large forces in the plates resulting to the occurrence of earthquakes. The best example of a plate tectonic quake is that which occurred in the San Andreas Fault. In this case, the North American plate and the Pacific plate were moving towards the same direction but one was moving faster than the other.

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On the other hand, the volcanic earthquakes are caused by the explosive volcanic eruption. This could either occur at the sea bed or on the land. There are many faults across the world. The location of such faults is a major determinant of where an earthquake will occur because they are the main causes of earthquakes. The type of the fault also determines how often earthquakes occur (Abrams & Morton, 2007). When the earth crust is submitted to tensional forces, it becomes thinner and weak. It causes a hot spot in the mantle which leads the magma to produce pressure and penetrate into the lithosphere and eventually erupt. Earthquakes are triggered by the forceful movement of magma as it finds its way onto the earth surface.

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Earthquakes have various effects including damage to infrastructure, change in geological features and impact on the living things in the areas they occur. Rae (2008) asserts that the rumbling of the earth usually shakes tall buildings, dams and bridges making them fall down. These structures could fall on human beings and animals and kill them or affect the transport system. It becomes very difficult to transport the food, water and health aid to the affected people when bridges are destroyed.

They can also trigger geomorphologic changes. For instance, they could cause the earth crust to move either horizontally or vertically. This could cause a rising, tilting, or dropping of the earth surface and eventually causing landslides or floods. They could also damage gas and power lines and cause fires (Rae, 2008). Additionally, earthquakes that occur in the sea can cause tidal waves or tsunamis: Long and high walls of water travelling at a very high speed. Tsunamis can destroy an entire city or population living next to the coastline. They can also lead to various health effects such as the spread of waterborne diseases that end up killing human beings and animals.

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Volcanic Eruptions and Their Repose, Unrest, Precursors, and Timing (2017)

Chapter: 1 introduction, 1 introduction.

Volcanoes are a key part of the Earth system. Most of Earth’s atmosphere, water, and crust were delivered by volcanoes, and volcanoes continue to recycle earth materials. Volcanic eruptions are common. More than a dozen are usually erupting at any time somewhere on Earth, and close to 100 erupt in any year ( Loughlin et al., 2015 ).

Volcano landforms and eruptive behavior are diverse, reflecting the large number and complexity of interacting processes that govern the generation, storage, ascent, and eruption of magmas. Eruptions are influenced by the tectonic setting, the properties of Earth’s crust, and the history of the volcano. Yet, despite the great variability in the ways volcanoes erupt, eruptions are all governed by a common set of physical and chemical processes. Understanding how volcanoes form, how they erupt, and their consequences requires an understanding of the processes that cause rocks to melt and change composition, how magma is stored in the crust and then rises to the surface, and the interaction of magma with its surroundings. Our understanding of how volcanoes work and their consequences is also shared with the millions of people who visit U.S. volcano national parks each year.

Volcanoes have enormous destructive power. Eruptions can change weather patterns, disrupt climate, and cause widespread human suffering and, in the past, mass extinctions. Globally, volcanic eruptions caused about 80,000 deaths during the 20th century ( Sigurdsson et al., 2015 ). Even modest eruptions, such as the 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption in Iceland, have multibillion-dollar global impacts through disruption of air traffic. The 2014 steam explosion at Mount Ontake, Japan, killed 57 people without any magma reaching the surface. Many volcanoes in the United States have the potential for much larger eruptions, such as the 1912 eruption of Katmai, Alaska, the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century ( Hildreth and Fierstein, 2012 ). The 2008 eruption of the unmonitored Kasatochi volcano, Alaska, distributed volcanic gases over most of the continental United States within a week ( Figure 1.1 ).

Finally, volcanoes are important economically. Volcanic heat provides low-carbon geothermal energy. U.S. generation of geothermal energy accounts for nearly one-quarter of the global capacity ( Bertani, 2015 ). In addition, volcanoes act as magmatic and hydrothermal distilleries that create ore deposits, including gold and copper ores.

Moderate to large volcanic eruptions are infrequent yet high-consequence events. The impact of the largest possible eruption, similar to the super-eruptions at Yellowstone, Wyoming; Long Valley, California; or Valles Caldera, New Mexico, would exceed that of any other terrestrial natural event. Volcanoes pose the greatest natural hazard over time scales of several decades and longer, and at longer time scales they have the potential for global catastrophe ( Figure 1.2 ). While

the continental United States has not suffered a fatal eruption since 1980 at Mount St. Helens, the threat has only increased as more people move into volcanic areas.

Volcanic eruptions evolve over very different temporal and spatial scales than most other natural hazards ( Figure 1.3 ). In particular, many eruptions are preceded by signs of unrest that can serve as warnings, and an eruption itself often persists for an extended period of time. For example, the eruption of Kilauea Volcano in Hawaii has continued since 1983. We also know the locations of many volcanoes and, hence, where most eruptions will occur. For these reasons, the impacts of at least some types of volcanic eruptions should be easier to mitigate than other natural hazards.

Anticipating the largest volcanic eruptions is possible. Magma must rise to Earth’s surface and this movement is usually accompanied by precursors—changes in seismic, deformation, and geochemical signals that can be recorded by ground-based and space-borne instruments. However, depending on the monitoring infrastructure, precursors may present themselves over time scales that range from a few hours (e.g., 2002 Reventador, Ecuador, and 2015 Calbuco, Chile) to decades before eruption (e.g., 1994 Rabaul, Papua New Guinea). Moreover, not all signals of volcanic unrest are immediate precursors to surface eruptions (e.g., currently Long Valley, California, and Campi Flegrei, Italy).

Probabilistic forecasts account for this uncertainty using all potential eruption scenarios and all relevant data. An important consideration is that the historical record is short and biased. The instrumented record is even shorter and, for most volcanoes, spans only the last few decades—a miniscule fraction of their lifetime. Knowledge can be extended qualitatively using field studies of volcanic deposits, historical accounts, and proxy data, such as ice and marine sediment cores and speleothem (cave) records. Yet, these too are biased because they commonly do not record small to moderate eruptions.

Understanding volcanic eruptions requires contributions from a wide range of disciplines and approaches. Geologic studies play a critical role in reconstructing the past eruption history of volcanoes,

especially of the largest events, and in regions with no historical or directly observed eruptions. Geochemical and geophysical techniques are used to study volcano processes at scales ranging from crystals to plumes of volcanic ash. Models reveal essential processes that control volcanic eruptions, and guide data collection. Monitoring provides a wealth of information about the life cycle of volcanoes and vital clues about what kind of eruption is likely and when it may occur.

1.1 OVERVIEW OF THIS REPORT

At the request of managers at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine established a committee to undertake the following tasks:

• Summarize current understanding of how magma is stored, ascends, and erupts.
• Discuss new disciplinary and interdisciplinary research on volcanic processes and precursors that could lead to forecasts of the type, size, and timing of volcanic eruptions.
• Describe new observations or instrument deployment strategies that could improve quantification of volcanic eruption processes and precursors.
• Identify priority research and observations needed to improve understanding of volcanic eruptions and to inform monitoring and early warning efforts.

The roles of the three agencies in advancing volcano science are summarized in Box 1.1 .

The committee held four meetings, including an international workshop, to gather information, deliberate, and prepare its report. The report is not intended to be a comprehensive review, but rather to provide a broad overview of the topics listed above. Chapter 2 addresses the opportunities for better understanding the storage, ascent, and eruption of magmas. Chapter 3 summarizes the challenges and prospects for forecasting eruptions and their consequences. Chapter 4 highlights repercussions of volcanic eruptions on a host of other Earth systems. Although not explicitly called out in the four tasks, the interactions between volcanoes and other Earth systems affect the consequences of eruptions, and offer opportunities to improve forecasting and obtain new insights into volcanic processes. Chapter 5 summarizes opportunities to strengthen

research in volcano science. Chapter 6 provides overarching conclusions. Supporting material appears in appendixes, including a list of volcano databases (see Appendix A ), a list of workshop participants (see Appendix B ), biographical sketches of the committee members (see Appendix C ), and a list of acronyms and abbreviations (see Appendix D ).

Background information on these topics is summarized in the rest of this chapter.

1.2 VOLCANOES IN THE UNITED STATES

The USGS has identified 169 potentially active volcanoes in the United States and its territories (e.g., Marianas), 55 of which pose a high threat or very high threat ( Ewert et al., 2005 ). Of the total, 84 are monitored by at least one seismometer, and only 3 have gas sensors (as of November 2016). 1 Volcanoes are found in the Cascade mountains, Aleutian arc, Hawaii, and the western interior of the continental United States ( Figure 1.4 ). The geographical extent and eruption hazards of these volcanoes are summarized below.

The Cascade volcanoes extend from Lassen Peak in northern California to Mount Meager in British Columbia. The historical record contains only small- to moderate-sized eruptions, but the geologic record reveals much larger eruptions ( Carey et al., 1995 ; Hildreth, 2007 ). Activity tends to be sporadic ( Figure 1.5 ). For example, nine Cascade eruptions occurred in the 1850s, but none occurred between 1915 and 1980, when Mount St. Helens erupted. Consequently, forecasting eruptions in the Cascades is subject to considerable uncertainty. Over the coming decades, there may be multiple eruptions from several volcanoes or no eruptions at all.

The Aleutian arc extends 2,500 km across the North Pacific and comprises more than 130 active and potentially active volcanoes. Although remote, these volcanoes pose a high risk to overflying aircraft that carry more than 30,000 passengers a day, and are monitored by a combination of ground- and space-based sensors. One or two small to moderate explosive eruptions occur in the Aleutians every year, and very large eruptions occur less frequently. For example, the world’s largest eruption of the 20th century occurred approximately 300 miles from Anchorage, in 1912.

In Hawaii, Kilauea has been erupting largely effusively since 1983, but the location and nature of eruptions can vary dramatically, presenting challenges for disaster preparation. The population at risk from large-volume, rapidly moving lava flows on the flanks of the Mauna Loa volcano has grown tremendously in the past few decades ( Dietterich and Cashman, 2014 ), and few island residents are prepared for the even larger magnitude explosive eruptions that are documented in the last 500 years ( Swanson et al., 2014 ).

All western states have potentially active volcanoes, from New Mexico, where lava flows have reached within a few kilometers of the Texas and Oklahoma borders ( Fitton et al., 1991 ), to Montana, which borders the Yellowstone caldera ( Christiansen, 1984 ). These volcanoes range from immense calderas that formed from super-eruptions ( Mastin et al., 2014 ) to small-volume basaltic volcanic fields that erupt lava flows and tephra for a few months to a few decades. Some of these eruptions are monogenic (erupt just once) and pose a special challenge for forecasting. Rates of activity in these distributed volcanic fields are low, with many eruptions during the past few thousand years (e.g., Dunbar, 1999 ; Fenton, 2012 ; Laughlin et al., 1994 ), but none during the past hundred years.

1.3 THE STRUCTURE OF A VOLCANO

Volcanoes often form prominent landforms, with imposing peaks that tower above the surrounding landscape, large depressions (calderas), or volcanic fields with numerous dispersed cinder cones, shield volcanoes, domes, and lava flows. These various landforms reflect the plate tectonic setting, the ways in which those volcanoes erupt, and the number of eruptions. Volcanic landforms change continuously through the interplay between constructive processes such as eruption and intrusion, and modification by tectonics, climate, and erosion. The stratigraphic and structural architecture of volcanoes yields critical information on eruption history and processes that operate within the volcano.

Beneath the volcano lies a magmatic system that in most cases extends through the crust, except during eruption. Depending on the setting, magmas may rise

___________________

1 Personal communication from Charles Mandeville, Program Coordinator, Volcano Hazards Program, U.S. Geological Survey, on November 26, 2016.

directly from the mantle or be staged in one or more storage regions within the crust before erupting. The uppermost part (within 2–3 km of Earth’s surface) often hosts an active hydrothermal system where meteoric groundwater mingles with magmatic volatiles and is heated by deeper magma. Identifying the extent and vigor of hydrothermal activity is important for three reasons: (1) much of the unrest at volcanoes occurs in hydrothermal systems, and understanding the interaction of hydrothermal and magmatic systems is important for forecasting; (2) pressure buildup can cause sudden and potentially deadly phreatic explosions from the hydrothermal system itself (such as on Ontake, Japan, in 2014), which, in turn, can influence the deeper magmatic system; and (3) hydrothermal systems are energy resources and create ore deposits.

Below the hydrothermal system lies a magma reservoir where magma accumulates and evolves prior to eruption. Although traditionally modeled as a fluid-filled cavity, there is growing evidence that magma reservoirs may comprise an interconnected complex of vertical and/or horizontal magma-filled cracks, or a partially molten mush zone, or interleaved lenses of magma and solid material ( Cashman and Giordano, 2014 ). In arc volcanoes, magma chambers are typically located 3–6 km below the surface. The magma chamber is usually connected to the surface via a fluid-filled conduit only during eruptions. In some settings, magma may ascend directly from the mantle without being stored in the crust.

In the broadest sense, long-lived magma reservoirs comprise both eruptible magma (often assumed to contain less than about 50 percent crystals) and an accumulation of crystals that grow along the margins or settle to the bottom of the magma chamber. Physical segregation of dense crystals and metals can cause the floor of the magma chamber to sag, a process balanced by upward migration of more buoyant melt. A long-lived magma chamber can thus become increasingly stratified in composition and density.

The deepest structure beneath volcanoes is less well constrained. Swarms of low-frequency earthquakes at mid- to lower-crustal depths (10–40 km) beneath volcanoes suggest that fluid is periodically transferred into the base of the crust ( Power et al., 2004 ). Tomographic studies reveal that active volcanic systems have deep crustal roots that contain, on average, a small fraction of melt, typically less than 10 percent. The spatial distribution of that melt fraction, particularly how much is concentrated in lenses or in larger magma bodies, is unknown. Erupted samples preserve petrologic and geochemical evidence of deep crystallization, which requires some degree of melt accumulation. Seismic imaging and sparse outcrops suggest that the proportion of unerupted solidified magma relative to the surrounding country rock increases with depth and that the deep roots of volcanoes are much more extensive than their surface expression.

1.4 MONITORING VOLCANOES

Volcano monitoring is critical for hazard forecasts, eruption forecasts, and risk mitigation. However, many volcanoes are not monitored at all, and others are monitored using only a few types of instruments. Some parameters, such as the mass, extent, and trajectory of a volcanic ash cloud, are more effectively measured by satellites. Other parameters, notably low-magnitude earthquakes and volcanic gas emissions that may signal an impending eruption, require ground-based monitoring on or close to the volcanic edifice. This section summarizes existing and emerging technologies for monitoring volcanoes from the ground and from space.

Monitoring Volcanoes on or Near the Ground

Ground-based monitoring provides data on the location and movement of magma. To adequately capture what is happening inside a volcano, it is necessary to obtain a long-term and continuous record, with periods spanning both volcanic quiescence and periods of unrest. High-frequency data sampling and efficient near-real-time relay of information are important, especially when processes within the volcano–magmatic–hydrothermal system are changing rapidly. Many ground-based field campaigns are time intensive and can be hazardous when volcanoes are active. In these situations, telemetry systems permit the safe and continuous collection of data, although the conditions can be harsh and the lifetime of instruments can be limited in these conditions.

Ground-based volcano monitoring falls into four broad categories: seismic, deformation, gas, and thermal monitoring ( Table 1.1 ). Seismic monitoring tools,

TABLE 1.1 Ground-Based Instrumentation for Monitoring Volcanoes

including seismometers and infrasound sensors, are used to detect vibrations caused by breakage of rock and movement of fluids and to assess the evolution of eruptive activity. Ambient seismic noise monitoring can image subsurface reservoirs and document changes in wave speed that may reflect stress. changes. Deformation monitoring tools, including tiltmeters, borehole strainmeters, the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS, which includes the Global Positioning System [GPS]), lidar, radar, and gravimeters, are used to detect the motion of magma and other fluids in the subsurface. Some of these tools, such as GNSS and lidar, are also used to detect erupted products, including ash clouds, pyroclastic density currents, and volcanic bombs. Gas monitoring tools, including a range of sensors ( Table 1.1 ), and direct sampling of gases and fluids are used to detect magma intrusions and changes in magma–hydrothermal interactions. Thermal monitoring tools, such as infrared cameras, are used to detect dome growth and lava breakouts. Continuous video or photographic observations are also commonly used and, despite their simplicity, most directly document volcanic activity. Less commonly used monitoring technologies, such as self-potential, electromagnetic techniques, and lightning detection are used to constrain fluid movement and to detect

ash clouds. In addition, unmanned aerial vehicles (e.g., aircraft and drones) are increasingly being used to collect data. Rapid sample collection and analysis is also becoming more common as a monitoring tool at volcano observatories. A schematic of ground-based monitoring techniques is shown in Figure 1.6 .

Monitoring Volcanoes from Space

Satellite-borne sensors and instruments provide synoptic observations during volcanic eruptions when collecting data from the ground is too hazardous or where volcanoes are too remote for regular observation. Repeat-pass data collected over years or decades provide a powerful means for detecting surface changes on active volcanoes. Improvements in instrument sensitivity, data availability, and the computational capacity required to process large volumes of data have led to a dramatic increase in “satellite volcano science.”

Although no satellite-borne sensor currently in orbit has been specifically designed for volcano monitoring, a number of sensors measure volcano-relevant

TABLE 1.2 Satellite-Borne Sensor Suite for Volcano Monitoring

NOTE: AIRS, Atmospheric Infrared Sounder; ALOS, Advanced Land Observing Satellite; ASTER, Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer; AVHRR, Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer; CALIPSO, Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation; COSMO-SkyMed, Constellation of Small Satellites for Mediterranean Basin Observation; GOES, Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite; IASI, Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer; MISR, Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer; MLS, Microwave Limb Sounder; MODIS, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer; OMI, Ozone Monitoring Instrument; OMPS, Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite; SAGE, Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment.

parameters, including heat flux, gas and ash emissions, and deformation ( Table 1.2 ). Thermal infrared data are used to detect eruption onset and cessation, calculate lava effusion rates, map lava flows, and estimate ash column heights during explosive eruptions. In some cases, satellites may capture thermal precursors to eruptions, although low-temperature phenomena are challenging to detect. Both high-temporal/low-spatial-resolution (geostationary orbit) and high-spatial/low-temporal-resolution (polar orbit) thermal infrared observations are needed for global volcano monitoring.

Satellite-borne sensors are particularly effective for observing the emission and dispersion of volcanic gas and ash plumes in the atmosphere. Although several volcanic gas species can be detected from space (including SO 2 , BrO, OClO, H 2 S, HCl, and CO; Carn et al., 2016 ), SO 2 is the most readily measured, and it is also responsible for much of the impact of eruptions on climate. Satellite measurements of SO 2 are valuable for detecting eruptions, estimating global volcanic fluxes and recycling of other volatile species, and tracking volcanic clouds that may be hazardous to aviation in near real time. Volcanic ash cloud altitude is most accurately determined by spaceborne lidar, although spatial coverage is limited. Techniques for measuring volcanic CO 2 from space are under development and could lead to earlier detection of preeruptive volcanic degassing.

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) enables global-scale background monitoring of volcano deformation ( Figure 1.7 ). InSAR provides much higher spatial resolution than GPS, but lower accuracy and temporal resolution. However, orbit repeat times will diminish as more InSAR missions are launched, such as the European Space Agency’s recently deployed Sentinel-1 satellite and the NASA–Indian Space Research Organisation synthetic aperture radar mission planned for launch in 2020.

1.5 ERUPTION BEHAVIOR

Eruptions range from violently explosive to gently effusive, from short lived (hours to days) to persistent over decades or centuries, from sustained to intermittent, and from steady to unsteady ( Siebert et al., 2015 ). Eruptions may initiate from processes within the magmatic system ( Section 1.3 ) or be triggered by processes and properties external to the volcano, such as precipitation, landslides, and earthquakes. The eruption behavior of a volcano may change over time. No classification scheme captures this full diversity of behaviors (see Bonadonna et al., 2016 ), but some common schemes to describe the style, magnitude, and intensity of eruptions are summarized below.

Eruption Magnitude and Intensity

The size of eruptions is usually described in terms of total erupted mass (or volume), often referred to as magnitude, and mass eruption rate, often referred to as intensity. Pyle (2015) quantified magnitude and eruption intensity as follows:

magnitude = log 10 (mass, in kg) – 7, and

intensity = log 10 (mass eruption rate, in kg/s) + 3.

The Volcano Explosivity Index (VEI) introduced by Newhall and Self (1982) assigns eruptions to a VEI class based primarily on measures of either magnitude (erupted mass or volume) or intensity (mass eruption rate and/or eruption plume height), with more weight given to magnitude. The VEI classes are summarized in Figure 1.8 . The VEI classification is still in use, despite its many limitations, such as its reliance on only a few types of measurements and its poor fit for small to moderate eruptions (see Bonadonna et al., 2016 ).

Smaller VEI events are relatively common, whereas larger VEI events are exponentially less frequent ( Siebert et al., 2015 ). For example, on average about three VEI 3 eruptions occur each year, whereas there is a 5 percent chance of a VEI 5 eruption and a 0.2 percent chance of a VEI 7 (e.g., Crater Lake, Oregon) event in any year.

Eruption Style

The style of an eruption encompasses factors such as eruption duration and steadiness, magnitude, gas flux, fountain or column height, and involvement of magma and/or external source of water (phreatic and phreatomagmatic eruptions). Eruptions are first divided into effusive (lava producing) and explosive (pyroclast producing) styles, although individual eruptions can be simultaneously effusive and weakly explosive, and can pass rapidly and repeatedly between eruption styles. Explosive eruptions are further subdivided into styles that are sustained on time scales of hours to days and styles that are short lived ( Table 1.3 ).

Classification of eruption style is often qualitative and based on historical accounts of characteristic eruptions from type-volcanoes. However, many type-volcanoes exhibit a range of eruption styles over time (e.g., progressing between Strombolian, Vulcanian, and Plinian behavior; see Fee et al., 2010 ), which has given rise to terms such as subplinian or violent Strombolian.

1.6 ERUPTION HAZARDS

Eruption hazards are diverse ( Figure 1.9 ) and may extend more than thousands of kilometers from an active volcano. From the perspective of risk and impact, it is useful to distinguish between near-source and distal hazards. Near-source hazards are far more unpredictable than distal hazards.

Near-source hazards include those that are airborne, such as tephra fallout, volcanic gases, and volcanic projectiles, and those that are transported laterally on or near the ground surface, such as pyroclastic density currents, lava flows, and lahars. Pyroclastic density currents are hot volcanic flows containing mixtures of gas and micron- to meter-sized volcanic particles. They can travel at velocities exceeding 100 km per hour. The heat combined with the high density of material within these flows obliterates objects in their path, making them the most destructive of volcanic hazards. Lava flows also destroy everything in their path, but usually move slowly enough to allow people to get out of the way. Lahars are mixtures of volcanic debris, sediment, and water that can travel many tens of kilometers along valleys and river channels. They may be triggered during an eruption by interaction between volcanic prod-

TABLE 1.3 Characteristics of Different Eruption Styles

ucts and snow, ice, rain, or groundwater. Lahars can be more devastating than the eruption itself. Ballistic blocks are large projectiles that typically fall within 1–5 km from vents.

The largest eruptions create distal hazards. Explosive eruptions produce plumes that are capable of dispersing ash hundreds to thousands of kilometers from the volcano. The thickness of ash deposited depends on the intensity and duration of the eruption and the wind direction. Airborne ash and ash fall are the most severe distal hazards and are likely to affect many more people than near-source hazards. They cause respiratory problems and roof collapse, and also affect transport networks and infrastructure needed to support emergency response. Volcanic ash is a serious risk to air traffic. Several jets fully loaded with passengers have temporarily lost power on all engines after encountering dilute ash clouds (e.g., Guffanti et al., 2010 ). Large lava flows, such as the 1783 Laki eruption in Iceland, emit volcanic gases that create respiratory problems and acidic rain more than 1,000 km from the eruption. Observed impacts of basaltic eruptions in Hawaii and Iceland include regional volcanic haze (“vog”) and acid rain that affect both agriculture and human health (e.g., Thordarson and Self, 2003 ) and fluorine can contaminate grazing land and water supplies (e.g., Cronin et al., 2003 ). Diffuse degassing of CO 2 can lead to deadly concentrations with fatal consequences such as occurred at Mammoth Lakes, California, or cause lakes to erupt, leading to massive CO 2 releases that suffocate people (e.g., Lake Nyos, Cameroon).

Secondary hazards can be more devastating than the initial eruption. Examples include lahars initiated by storms, earthquakes, landslides, and tsunamis from eruptions or flank collapse; volcanic ash remobilized by wind to affect human health and aviation for extended periods of time; and flooding because rain can no longer infiltrate the ground.

1.7 MODELING VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS

Volcanic processes are governed by the laws of mass, momentum, and energy conservation. It is possible to develop models for magmatic and volcanic phenomena based on these laws, given sufficient information on mechanical and thermodynamic properties of the different components and how they interact with each other. Models are being developed for all processes in volcanic systems, including melt transport in the mantle, the evolution of magma bodies within the crust, the ascent of magmas to the surface, and the fate of magma that erupts effusively or explosively.

A central challenge for developing models is that volcanic eruptions are complex multiphase and multicomponent systems that involve interacting processes over a wide range of length and time scales. For example, during storage and ascent, the composition, temperature, and physical properties of magma and host rocks evolve. Bubbles and crystals nucleate and grow in this magma and, in turn, greatly influence the properties of the magmas and lavas. In explosive eruptions, magma fragmentation creates a hot mixture of gas and particles with a wide range of sizes and densities. Magma also interacts with its surroundings: the deformable rocks that surround the magma chamber and conduit, the potentially volatile groundwater and surface water, a changing landscape over which pyroclastic density currents and lava flows travel, and the atmosphere through which eruption columns rise.

Models for volcanic phenomena that involve a small number of processes and that are relatively amenable to direct observation, such as volcanic plumes, are relatively straightforward to develop and test. In contrast, phenomena that occur underground are more difficult to model because there are more interacting processes. In those cases, direct validation is much more challenging and in many cases impossible. Forecasting ash dispersal using plume models is more straightforward and testable than forecasting the onset, duration, and style of eruption using models that seek to explain geophysical and geochemical precursors. In all cases, however, the use of even imperfect models helps improve the understanding of volcanic systems.

Modeling approaches can be divided into three categories:

• Reduced models make simplifying assumptions about dynamics, heat transfer, and geometry to develop first-order explanations for key properties and processes, such as the velocity of lava flows and pyroclastic density currents, the height of eruption columns, the magma chamber size and depth, the dispersal of tephra, and the ascent of magma in conduits. Well-calibrated or tested reduced models offer a straightforward ap-

proach for combining observations and models in real time in an operational setting (e.g., ash dispersal forecasting for aviation safety). Models may not need to be complex if they capture the most important processes, although simplifications require testing against more comprehensive models and observations.

• Multiphase and multiphysics models improve scientific understanding of complex processes by invoking fewer assumptions and idealizations than reduced models ( Figure 1.10 ), but at the expense of increased complexity and computational demands. They also require additional components, such as a model for how magma in magma chambers and conduits deforms when stressed; a model for turbulence in pyroclastic density currents and plumes; terms that describe the thermal and mechanical exchange among gases, crystals, and particles; and a description of ash aggregation in eruption columns. A central challenge for multiphysics models is integrating small-scale processes with large-scale dynamics. Many of the models used in volcano science build on understanding developed in other science and engineering fields and for other ap-

plications. Multiphysics and multiscale models benefit from rapidly expanding computational capabilities.

• Laboratory experiments simulate processes for which the geometry and physical and thermal processes and properties can be scaled ( Mader et al., 2004 ). Such experiments provide insights on fundamental processes, such as crystal dynamics in flowing magmas, entrainment in eruption columns, propagation of dikes, and sedimentation from pyroclastic density currents ( Figure 1.11 ). Experiments have also been used successfully to develop the subsystem models used in numerical simulations, and to validate computer simulations for known inputs and properties.

The great diversity of existing models reflects to a large extent the many interacting processes that operate in volcanic eruptions and the corresponding simplifying assumptions currently required to construct such models. The challenge in developing models is often highlighted in discrepancies between models and observations of natural systems. Nevertheless, eruption models reveal essential processes governing volcanic eruptions, and they provide a basis for interpreting measurements from prehistoric and active eruptions and for closing observational gaps. Mathematical models offer a guide for what observations will be most useful. They may also be used to make quantitative and testable predictions, supporting forecasting and hazard assessment.

Volcanic eruptions are common, with more than 50 volcanic eruptions in the United States alone in the past 31 years. These eruptions can have devastating economic and social consequences, even at great distances from the volcano. Fortunately many eruptions are preceded by unrest that can be detected using ground, airborne, and spaceborne instruments. Data from these instruments, combined with basic understanding of how volcanoes work, form the basis for forecasting eruptions—where, when, how big, how long, and the consequences.

Accurate forecasts of the likelihood and magnitude of an eruption in a specified timeframe are rooted in a scientific understanding of the processes that govern the storage, ascent, and eruption of magma. Yet our understanding of volcanic systems is incomplete and biased by the limited number of volcanoes and eruption styles observed with advanced instrumentation. Volcanic Eruptions and Their Repose, Unrest, Precursors, and Timing identifies key science questions, research and observation priorities, and approaches for building a volcano science community capable of tackling them. This report presents goals for making major advances in volcano science.

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Plate tectonics, volcanoes and earthquakes.

• + Create new collection

The Earth rumbles and a hiss of steam issues from the top of Mt Ruapehu. Are these two events related? Is the earthquake caused by the volcano? Or is the steam caused by the earthquake?

Tectonic plates

When Alfred Wegener first proposed the idea of continental drift (the precursor idea to plate tectonic theory), it didn’t quite explain the full story. While he correctly showed that Africa and South America fitted together, his model wasn’t able to explain the violent forces that occur around the Earth’s crust.

It wasn’t until the 1960s that a full explanation began to develop – the theory of plate tectonics. This theory explained many pieces of the puzzle that scientists had observed, for example, continental fit, matching geology, past glaciation, movements of the ocean floor and the location of fossils of ancient animals and plants.

Scientists now believe that the crust of the Earth consists of rigid interconnecting plates (6 major plates and a few smaller ones). Plates are thought to float on the partially molten mantle, moving away from oceanic ridges where new plate material is produced and moving past each other or colliding along plate boundaries. Earthquakes and volcanoes are related to this movement.

Explore plate tectonics further.

Colliding plates

Where plates come into contact, energy is released. Plates sliding past each other cause friction and heat. Subducting plates melt into the mantle, and diverging plates create new crust material.

Subducting plates, where one tectonic plate is being driven under another, are associated with volcanoes and earthquakes. This activity is focused along the edge of the plate boundary where two plates come into contact, forming regions such as the Pacific Ring of Fire – a chain of earthquake and volcanic activity around the edge of the Pacific Ocean – which generates 75% of the world’s volcanoes and 80% of the world’s earthquakes.

Diverging plates

When plates move away from each other, the space between them gets filled with material, which rises to the surface, cools and forms mid-oceanic ridges. The Pacific Ocean is growing wider by about 18 cm per year as the plates diverge and the mid-oceanic ridge is built up.

Subducting plates and volcanoes

Plate material that is produced along the ocean floor is generally quite dense and relatively heavy. Continental plates don’t tend to get subducted. When oceanic plate is pushed from the mid-ocean ridge towards a plate boundary with a continental plate, it tends to subduct or dive below the continental crust. In this process, water is also being subducted with the oceanic plate. Friction increases the heat along such boundaries, which causes this material to melt and mix the oceanic plate material, the continental plate material and the water.

Andesite volcanoes tend to form at these subduction boundaries. This may have something to do with differences in plate densities and the release of gases, such as water vapour. As more heat is being produced through the subduction process, the mix of more and less volatile ingredients causes changes in density and pressure, which are linked to volcanic activity.

Volcanoes and earthquakes

Volcanoes and earthquakes are often found in the same place, but are they related? Does one trigger the other? The answer seems to be yes – but not always. They are sometimes linked but are often independent events.

When a volcano erupts, the pressure of the rising magma forcing its way through the crust to the surface will often trigger earthquake activity. Scientists have been able to demonstrate this link and also know what type of earthquake to look for.

Conversely, an earthquake may trigger subsequent eruptions. As the crust changes and moves in a major earthquake, fissures or cracks can form that may act as pipelines for magma and future volcanoes. This is harder to monitor and test and is an area of active research.

Related content

Use the teaching resource Earthquakes New Zealand to learn about seven activities designed to help students develop an understanding about earthquakes in New Zealand, including why we get them and how we measure them.

There are many volcanoes in the Pacific, including the very large Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapa underwater one. Read about the devastating Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapa volcanic eruption in January 2022, the tsunami that followed, and what we might expect next? This article looks at what we’ve learnt a year later about this violent eruption and predicting future submarine volcanic eruptions.

Realistic contexts connect students to authentic scientific processes and purposes, it's all explained in:

• Earthquakes resources – planning pathways
• Volcanoes resources – planning pathways

Earthquakes is a collection supports the House of Science Earthquakes resource kit – but it is also useful for anyone exploring Rūaumoko, what's inside the Earth, plate tectonics, seismic waves and engineering designed to keep us safe.

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Essays About Volcanoes: Top 5 Examples and 10 Prompts

Do you need to write essays about volcanoes but don’t know where to start? Check out our top essay examples and prompts to help you write a high-quality essay.

Considered the planet’s geologic architects, volcanoes are responsible for more than 80% of the Earth’s surface . The mountains, craters, and fertile soil from these eruptions give way to the very foundation of life itself, making it possible for humans to survive and thrive.  

Aside from the numerous ocean floor volcanoes, there are 161 active volcanoes in the US . However, these beautiful and unique landforms can instantly turn into a nightmare, like Mt. Tambora in Indonesia, which killed 92,000 people in 1815 .

Various writings are critical to understanding these openings in the Earth’s crust, especially for students studying volcanoes. It can be tricky to write this topic and will require a lot of research to ensure all the information gathered is accurate. 

To help you, read on to see our top essay examples and writing prompts to help you begin writing.

Top 5 Essay Examples

1. short essay on volcanoes by prasad nanda , 2. types of volcanoes by reena a , 3. shield volcano, one of the volcano types by anonymous on gradesfixer.com, 4. benefits and problems caused by volcanoes by anonymous on newyorkessays.com, 5. volcanoes paper by vanessa strickland, 1. volcanoes and their classifications, 2. a dormant volcano’s eruption, 3. volcanic eruptions in the movies, 4. the supervolcano: what is it, 5. the word’s ring of fire, 6. what is a lahar, 7. why does a volcano erupt, 8. my experience with volcanic eruptions, 9. effects of volcanic eruptions, 10. what to do during volcanic disasters.

“The name, “volcano” originates from the name Vulcan, a god of fire in Roman mythology.”

Nanda briefly defines volcanoes, stating they help release hot pressure that builds up deep within the planet. Then, he discusses each volcano classification, including lava and magma’s roles during a volcanic eruption. Besides interesting facts about volcanoes (like the Ojos del Salado as the world’s tallest volcano), Nanda talks about volcanic eruptions’ havoc. However, he also lays down their benefits, such as cooled magma turning to rich soil for crop cultivation.

“The size, style, and frequency of eruptions can differ greatly but all these elements are correlated to the shape of a volcano.”

In this essay, Reena identifies the three main types of volcanoes and compares them by shape, eruption style, and magma type and temperature. A shield volcano is a broad, flat domelike volcano with basaltic magma and gentle eruptions. The strato or composite volcano is the most violent because its explosive eruption results in a lava flow, pyroclastic flows, and lahar. Reena shares that a caldera volcano is rare and has sticky and cool lava, but it’s the most dangerous type. To make it easier for the readers to understand her essay, she adds figures describing the process of volcanic eruptions.

“All in all, shield volcanoes are the nicest of the three but don’t be fooled, it can still do damage.”

As the essay’s title suggests, the author focuses on the most prominent type of volcano with shallow slopes – the shield volcano. Countries like Iceland, New Zealand, and the US have this type of volcano, but it’s usually in the oceans, like the Mauna Loa in the Hawaiian Islands. Also, apart from its shape and magma type, a shield volcano has regular but calmer eruptions until water enters its vents.

“Volcanic eruptions bring both positive and negative impacts to man.”

The essay delves into the different conditions of volcanic eruptions, including their effects on a country and its people. Besides destroying crops, animals, and lives, they damage the economy and environment. However, these misfortunes also leave behind treasures, such as fertile soil from ash, minerals like copper, gold, and silver from magma, and clean and unlimited geothermal energy. After these incidents, a place’s historic eruptions also boost its tourism.

“Beautiful and powerful, awe-inspiring and deadly, they are spectacular reminders of the dynamic forces that shape our planet.”

Strickland’s essay centers on volcanic formations, types, and studies, specifically Krakatoa’s eruption in 1883. She explains that when two plates hit each other, the Earth melts rocks into magma and gases, forming a volcano. Strickland also mentions the pros and cons of living near a volcanic island. For example, even though a tsunami is possible, these islands are rich in marine life, giving fishermen a good living.

Are you looking for more topics like this? Check out our round-up of essay topics about nature .

10 Writing Prompts For Essays About Volcanoes

Do you need more inspiration for your essay? See our best essay prompts about volcanoes below:

Identify and discuss the three classifications of volcanoes according to how often they erupt: active, dormant or inactive, and extinct. Find the similarities and differences of each variety and give examples. At the end of your essay, tell your readers which volcano is the most dangerous and why.

Volcanoes that have not erupted for a very long time are considered inactive or dormant, but they can erupt anytime in the future. For this essay, look for an inactive volcano that suddenly woke up after years of sleeping. Then, find the cause of its sudden eruption and add the extent of its damage. To make your piece more interesting, include an interview with people living near dormant volcanoes and share their thoughts on the possibility of them exploding anytime.

Choose an on-screen depiction of how volcanoes work, like the documentary “ Krakatoa: Volcano of Destruction .” Next, briefly summarize the movie, then comment on how realistic the film’s effects, scenes, and dialogues are. Finally, conclude your essay by debating the characters’ decisions to save themselves.

The Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) criteria interpret danger based on intensity and magnitude. Explain how this scale recognizes a supervolcano. Talk about the world’s supervolcanoes, which are active, dormant, and extinct. Add the latest report on a supervolcano’s eruption and its destruction.

Identify the 15 countries in the Circum-Pacific belt and explore each territory’s risks to being a part of The Ring of Fire. Explain why it’s called The Ring of Fire and write its importance. You can also discuss the most dangerous volcano within the ring.

If talking about volcanoes as a whole seems too generic, focus on one aspect of it. Lahar is a mixture of water, pyroclastic materials, and rocky debris that rapidly flows down from the slopes of a volcano. First, briefly define a lahar in your essay and focus on how it forms. Then, consider its dangers to living things. You should also add lahar warning signs and the best way to escape it.

Use this prompt to learn and write the entire process of a volcanic eruption. Find out the equipment or operations professionals use to detect magma’s movement inside a volcano to signal that it’s about to blow up. Make your essay informative, and use data from reliable sources and documentaries to ensure you only present correct details.

If you don’t have any personal experience with volcanic eruptions, you can interview someone who does. To ensure you can collect all the critical points you need, create a questionnaire beforehand. Take care to ask about their feelings and thoughts on the situation.

Write about the common effects of volcanic eruptions at the beginning of your essay. Next, focus on discussing its psychological effects on the victims, such as those who have lost loved ones, livelihoods, and properties.

Help your readers prepare for disasters in an informative essay. List what should be done before, during, and after a volcanic eruption. Include relevant tips such as being observant to know where possible emergency shelters are. You can also add any assistance offered by the government to support the victims.Here’s a great tip: Proper grammar is critical for your essays. Grammarly is one of our top grammar checkers. Find out why in this  Grammarly review .

Maria Caballero is a freelance writer who has been writing since high school. She believes that to be a writer doesn't only refer to excellent syntax and semantics but also knowing how to weave words together to communicate to any reader effectively.

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• Review Article
• Open access
• Published: 12 February 2021

A review framework of how earthquakes trigger volcanic eruptions

• Gilles Seropian   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1885-4763 1 ,
• Ben M. Kennedy   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-7235-6493 1 ,
• Thomas R. Walter 2 ,
• Mie Ichihara 3 &
• Arthur D. Jolly 4  

Nature Communications volume  12 , Article number:  1004 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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• Volcanology

It is generally accepted that tectonic earthquakes may trigger volcanic activity, although the underlying mechanisms are poorly constrained. Here, we review current knowledge, and introduce a novel framework to help characterize earthquake-triggering processes. This framework outlines three parameters observable at volcanoes, namely magma viscosity, open- or closed-system degassing and the presence or absence of an active hydrothermal system. Our classification illustrates that most types of volcanoes may be seismically-triggered, though require different combinations of volcanic and seismic conditions, and triggering is unlikely unless the system is primed for eruption. Seismically-triggered unrest is more common, and particularly associated with hydrothermal systems.

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Introduction.

Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes are amongst the most spectacular and sometimes deadliest natural events occurring on our planet, fascinating humans for centuries, with records extending to ancient times 1 , 2 , 3 . One naturally arising question is whether tectonic earthquakes can trigger volcanic eruptions, referred to as earthquake–volcano interactions 4 or seismically triggered eruptions 5 , 6 . The statistical record of seismically triggered eruptions shows it is a relatively rare occurrence 7 , 8 , but understanding the causal relationships between earthquakes and volcanoes is essential towards more efficient hazard management approaches. A number of articles have summarized recent concepts and observations of earthquake–volcano interactions, including Hill et al. 4 , Koyama 9 , Manga and Brodsky 6 , Eggert and Walter 10 and Watt et al. 11 . We herein provide a framework for using their findings and highlight recent advances. Our motivation is to identify which types of volcanoes are more susceptible to seismic triggers.

Volcanoes display an immense diversity in subsurface and aerial structure, style of eruption, chemical composition or precursory signals. As a result, the underlying seismic-triggering mechanisms may vary from one seismically triggered eruption to another. Latter 12 already noted in 1971 that “the process is neither universal nor invariable”. Besides, earthquakes may even inhibit volcanic activity in some conditions 9 , 13 , 14 , 15 . Hence, can we identify and classify volcanoes based on their sensitivity to seismic-triggering mechanisms? A common method is to devise a classification of volcanoes based on historical records: if a given type of volcano erupts more frequently after earthquakes, then it is considered more sensitive 8 , 9 , 16 , 17 . Unfortunately, the limited number of recorded events precludes statistically significant correlations for most volcanoes 8 .

In this contribution, we adopt a new strategy where we start from the underlying physical mechanisms in order to derive our classification. By considering the favourable conditions for each mechanism, we construct a series of different volcano types, with each one being sensitive to different mechanisms. We then examine different earthquake scenarios and the control they exert on triggering dynamics. We thus produce a novel classification of volcanoes, according to how they can be seismically triggered aimed at informing future monitoring or statistical efforts.

Observations

The oldest and commonest evidence of earthquake–volcano interactions is serendipitous observation 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 . These potentially coincidental observations later evolved into accurate records combining multiple geophysical signals 10 , permitting more precise correlations 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 . In particular, the recent emergence of satellite monitoring as a reliable tool in geosciences allowed for a more systematic and consistent monitoring of volcanoes globally 17 , 26 , 27 , 28 . The influence of an earthquake on an eruption can also be inferred a posteriori from crystal textures 29 , 30 , 31 . Like other authors, we emphasize that a spatio-temporal correlation between seismic and volcanic events does not necessarily imply a causal relationship. Two concurrent events could result from a common third underlying process, or occur by chance. Yet observing a correlation is a necessary first step in unravelling a potential causal relationship.

There are documented cases of both changes from quiescence to eruption 6 , 20 , 29 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , and changes in style of an ongoing eruption 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 in the weeks following an earthquake. Earthquakes may also trigger a broad spectrum of non-eruptive unrest phenomena including increased seismicity 25 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , degassing 17 , 25 , 34 , 46 , 47 , heat flux 26 , 27 , 28 , 48 or subsidence 49 , 50 . Hydrothermal systems are particularly sensitive to seismic stimuli, with many reports of increased activity following earthquakes 6 , 51 , 52 , 53 , 54 , 55 .

Statistical inference

Statistical tests are a crucial step to assess whether eruptions follow earthquakes due to significant coupling or simply by coincidence. Determining the temporal and spatial extent of earthquakes’ impact on volcanoes also helps to constrain plausible mechanisms and inform hazard models. The historical earthquake and eruption records are regarded to be complete only in the most recent period (1960s–present) 8 , 56 . As a result, the sample size (i.e. number of events considered) is quite small, decreasing the robustness of statistical tests.

The early statistical groundwork on a global scale 5 , 6 , 10 , 56 , 57 was updated by Sawi and Manga 8 who conclude that the apparent correlations within a few days occur most likely due to chance. Yet, there exists a slight but significant increase in eruption rate in the 2–5 years period following an earthquake on a global scale 8 , 33 , 56 . Statistical tests perform better on regional scales, in particular in active subduction zones 8 , 10 . This is supported by detailed studies of the Chilean 11 , 16 , Japanese 58 and Indonesian 7 , 33 subduction zones which all show increased eruption rates—to various degrees—following large magnitude earthquakes. Ultimately, the internal state of the volcano—whether it is “ready” to erupt—dictates whether it will be seismically triggered or not 7 . This association may thus simply reflect the fact that subduction zones feature the highest concentration of large earthquakes and volcanoes on the verge of erupting 7 .

The maximum distance at which eruptions may be seismically triggered is debated. Delle Donne et al. 27 propose a distance–magnitude relationship, akin to what is found in the mud volcanism and soil liquefaction literature 59 , 60 . For triggered-eruptions stricto sensu, Nishimura 56 suggests a limit of about 200 km from the epicentre, whereas Marzocchi et al. 61 propose 1000 km. Concerning triggered-unrest, earthquake-induced thermal anomalies 27 , 28 and seismicity 62 are both reported at distances over 10,000 km. This matches observations of seismically induced changes in groundwater level or streamflow 63 .

Triggering mechanisms

A wide range of triggering mechanisms have been proposed, affecting the host rock, magma chamber and/or hydrothermal system, causing stress changes in solid state and dynamic variations in fluid and multiphase systems 4 , 6 , 9 , 64 . Earthquakes result from sudden ruptures in the crust, and cause significant changes in the surrounding stress field. We must thus investigate how stress perturbations affect magmatic systems in order to understand how this may eventually lead to an eruption. Stress can be transferred either statically or dynamically (Fig.  1 ), which will in turn dictate what triggering mechanisms can occur. We now examine both cases.

Dynamic stresses are transient, whereas static stresses last permanently. a In the region close to the epicentre, dynamic and static stresses have similar amplitudes. b Far from the epicentre, however, dynamic stresses have a much larger amplitude and static stresses are negligible.

Static processes

Static stress changes result from the deformation of rocks following an earthquake 65 (Fig.  1 ). The resultant strain is spatially confined to within a few fault lengths around the epicentre and remains until the stress is elastically released or dissipated by ductile flow. Static stress changes can be either compressive or extensional, both of which might promote eruption 9 , 56 .

Extensional stresses facilitate dyke opening by “unclamping” the system (Fig.  2 ), thus promoting magma transport and potentially triggering an eruption 16 , 29 , 32 , 33 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 , 75 . If the magma already contains bubbles, then reduced compression could result in overpressure 76 , 77 . Additionally, extension favours strike-slip faulting and increased permeability 78 , 79 , thus allowing increased advection of magmatic fluids and melt 15 , 78 .

Mechanisms names in yellow are due to static stresses whereas those in black and white arise from dynamic stresses.

Compressional stresses have been conceptualized to squeeze magma upwards 13 , 66 , 67 , 80 , 81 , 82 , 83 (Fig.  2 ), though this process has been criticized 84 . Conversely, compression at shallow depths has been inferred to inhibit and arrest dyke propagation 9 , 14 , 85 , 86 , 87 , and thus prevent eruption. We emphasize that the orientation of volcanic structures relative to stresses is critical to these models.

Seismic stresses are eventually dissipated by viscous flow of the lower lithosphere and asthenosphere 88 , 89 . This process happens over years to decades. This slow relaxation of underlying layers will impose “quasi-static” stress changes on the overlying, brittle lithosphere. These quasi-static stress changes have also been postulated to favour volcanic eruptions 4 , 61 , though the physical mechanism(s) require further study.

Dynamic processes

Dynamic stresses involve the oscillatory stresses induced by seismic waves 90 (Fig.  1 ). The amplitudes of dynamic stresses decrease much more gradually with distance than their static counterparts, hence dynamic stresses will generally (1) be greater and (2) travel much further than static stresses 6 , 90 , 91 , 92 . However, dynamic stresses are oscillatory phenomena, and thus feature a range of characteristic frequencies and are transient. Responses to dynamic stresses can be broadly divided into three categories.

Volatile processes

Volatiles have the lowest viscosities of all volcanic fluids (as low as 10 −5  Pa.s), high compressibility, and can thus respond quickly to dynamic stresses. Three mechanisms associated with volatiles could lead to an eruption, namely (1) bubble nucleation and growth, (2) advective overpressure associated with bubble rise and (3) falling crystal roofs facilitating vesiculation (Fig.  2 ).

Dynamic stresses could induce bubble nucleation in magmas 6 , 23 by varying the local pressure. The phenomenon is well known in other fluids, in particular in water 93 , and usually referred to as cavitation. Static decompression may sometimes be sufficient to trigger nucleation 23 , 33 , 35 . Pressure oscillations in the fluid can locally change the solubility and diffusivity of volatiles (mostly water), thus accelerating bubble formation processes. The phenomenon was experimentally demonstrated for groundwater 94 . Bubble nucleation in magma, however, is a very complex process, depending upon many parameters 95 (e.g., volatile oversaturation, melt composition, presence of nucleation sites). For instance, it is notoriously difficult to nucleate bubbles experimentally in crystal poor rhyolite 96 , sometimes requiring immense pressure drops >100 MPa, much larger than seismic dynamic stresses 6 , 90 (generally <10 MPa). With abundant nucleation sites, however, a few MPa may be sufficient to induce bubble nucleation 97 , 98 . To the best of our knowledge, there is no available experimental evidence showing that pressure oscillations can induce bubble nucleation in silicate melts.

Magma often already contains bubbles, in which case problems related to nucleation become irrelevant. Dynamic stresses may then accelerate volatile diffusion and bubble growth. Rectified diffusion is a very commonly cited mechanism where seismic waves enhance diffusion of volatiles inside the bubbles 99 , 100 , 101 but its effects have initially been overestimated, and it is now considered most likely inefficient in magma 6 , 102 . We will then not consider rectified diffusion further in this contribution. Other dynamic mechanisms that could facilitate bubble growth and coalescence include Ostwald ripening 103 , 104 or advection due to Bjerknes force 105 , but they have not been considered under the lens of earthquake–volcano interactions yet.

A further mechanism related to bubbles is advective overpressure 106 , 107 (Fig.  2 ). Here, it is considered that bubbles that were previously held down to the reservoir floor or walls by surface tension can be shaken loose by seismic waves. Assuming an incompressible fluid, a closed system with undeformable walls and no mass exchange between the bubbles and the melt, the bubbles can carry large overpressures with them while rising 106 , 108 , 109 . Nevertheless, this mechanism has been heavily debated 110 , 111 because most of the assumptions are unrealistic for a magmatic reservoir. Advective overpressure could still be effective in hydrothermal and hydrogeological systems however 53 , 54 , 107 , 112 . It is also possible that seismic waves increase bubble rise ascent speed, as shown by preliminary results from analogue experiments in shear thinning fluids 113 , 114 .

Finally, seismic waves could dislodge crystal aggregates that accumulate on top of a magma reservoir 4 , 6 (Fig.  2 ). Upon detaching, dense crystals will sink and lighter melt will rise to replace them. Upwelling melt is then prone to vesiculation, which could in turn lead to an eruption. Preliminary calculations 4 , 6 showed the mechanism to be theoretically realistic, but it will require further work to demonstrate that (a) these crystal roofs exist, (b) characterize their rheology and (c) validate the theory used to describe sinking of crystal plumes.

Resonance processes

The second category of mechanisms relates to the mechanical sway of magma in response to shaking. The amount of movement will depend on a number of parameters, including the resonant frequency of the system, mainly controlled by the edifice dimensions and reservoir geometry. If the seismic waves match this frequency, the processes will be greatly enhanced; otherwise effects will be negligible. Two resonance mechanisms have been proposed, namely sloshing and edifice resonance (Fig.  2 ).

Seismic waves can induce sloshing in the reservoir 115 . Sloshing refers to the movement of a fluid inside its container 116 , 117 , 118 —here magma in its reservoir. Sloshing of a foam layer in a magmatic reservoir or conduit could lead to foam collapse, increased degassing and vesiculation, potentially forming gas slugs and Strombolian eruptions 115 . Analogue experiments show that foam collapse will only occur if (1) the incident seismic waves carry significant energy around the reservoir’s resonance frequency to initiate sloshing and (2) a magma foam is present with a free top surface or is overlying a deeper dense melt region 115 . The mechanism will further be facilitated by a foam featuring a high bubble fraction, large bubbles and low melt viscosity.

Seismic waves can also increase melt and volatile migration inside a volcanic edifice 119 . A combination of analogue and numerical models show that shaking will accelerate fluid movement in either direction (upwards, downwards or laterally) depending upon the fluid buoyancy and storage depth 119 . Lighter (in particular bubble rich) and shallower fluids will tend to move upwards. The phenomenon is again greatly enhanced when the seismic waves resonate with the edifice. Thus, edifice resonance may either favour eruption by facilitating magma mobilization upwards or retard an eruption by forcing magma downwards 119 .

Hydrothermal system triggering

Hydrothermal and geothermal systems have been observed to be extremely sensitive to earthquakes and dynamic stresses in particular 6 , 15 , 41 , 51 , 52 , 54 , 90 , 120 , 121 , 122 , 123 , 124 , 125 , 126 , 127 , 128 , 129 , 130 , 131 , 132 . Hydrothermal systems are also generally well connected to the underlying magmatic reservoir 133 , 134 , hence destabilization may lead to a top-down depressurization of the entire magmatic system, and eventually magmatic eruption 4 , 15 , 135 , 136 , 137 , 138 (Fig.  2 ). The possibility for hydrothermal systems to form a link between seismic waves and magmatic reservoir destabilization has received little attention under the lens of seismic triggers 4 , 83 , 138 but observations 15 , 34 , 42 , 127 suggest that it could play a major role. The triggering mechanisms of hydrothermal systems generally fall into two categories: change in fluid pressure and change in permeability.

The physical models describing changes in fluid pressure in hydrothermal systems are similar to the ones described in section “Volatile processes”. The main mechanisms are bubble nucleation 94 and advective overpressure 54 , 107 , 112 . Here, however, the main fluid is water, with a viscosity of 10 −3  Pa.s. Additionally, the gas phase is generated by evaporation instead of volatile diffusion in the liquid phase. These features allow for much faster kinetics and less viscous dissipation, making these mechanisms more efficient in hydrothermal settings.

Seismic waves can significantly alter permeability over short time-intervals 59 , 139 (Fig.  2 ). Such changes have been particularly well observed in hydrogeologic systems 140 , with sudden variations in streamflow 141 , 142 , groundwater level 143 , 144 , 145 , 146 , 147 , temperature 148 , 149 , 150 and seismically triggered mud volcanism 6 , 60 , 151 , 152 , 153 . With increased permeability, regions of higher and lower pressures may become connected, allowing fluid flow and pore pressure redistribution 59 , 63 . The sudden influx of fluids into originally low-pressure zones, may push such regions beyond a critical pressure threshold and produce an eruption 120 . On the other hand, reduced permeability allows local pressurization, which may lead to fragmentation and eruption 154 , 155 . The mechanisms described hereafter are particularly attractive because they necessitate relatively small (<1 MPa) dynamic stresses, and may thus be triggered more easily 59 . Three mechanisms are often invoked to explain changes in permeability.

Firstly, seismic waves may unclog or clog fractures 156 , 157 , 158 , 159 , 160 . The passage of seismic waves may intensify fluid flow, which could in turn entrain small particulates resulting in both clogging 160 and unclogging 156 downstream depending on fracture orientations.

Dynamic stresses may also enhance or reduce permeability by opening, closing or shearing cracks 15 , 132 , 141 , 161 , 162 , 163 . Opening new cracks or widening already existing ones increases permeability whereas other fractures with less favourable orientations would be closed and hence decrease permeability.

Finally, seismic waves may lower the brittle-plastic transition between the hydrothermal and magmatic systems 4 , 137 (Fig.  2 ). For this scenario, we assume that there exists an impermeable plastic transition zone underlying the hydrothermal system retaining pressurized fluids 164 . In this case, the strain rates imposed by seismic waves may be sufficient to promote brittle behaviour and release overpressurized fluids into the hydrothermal system (referred to as a hydraulic surge 4 ), favouring unrest and eruption 4 , 137 .

External triggers

Earthquakes can also trigger eruptions indirectly via external triggers. These occur when an earthquake triggers a non-volcanic event which then cascades towards an eruption. A typical example is that of an earthquake triggering a landslide or block and ash flow above a critically pressured magmatic reservoir or dome 165 , 166 , 167 . The resulting sudden decompression may lead to eruption of magma. Another documented external trigger is via crust decarbonation 40 . Earthquakes induce cracking in the crust underlying the magmatic reservoir, thus releasing important volumes of CO 2 . CO 2 then flushes the reservoir, significantly lowering the solubility of water, hence triggering vesiculation, pressurization and eventually producing the observed changes in eruption style. While it is important to explore the possible feedbacks between magmatic systems and their environments, we will not consider external triggers further, and solely focus on direct interactions between earthquakes and magmatic systems.

External triggers hence have the potential to trigger eruptions in many possible ways, it is thus important to explore, in the future, the possible feedbacks between an igneous system, its hydrothermal and their mechanical environment when subjected to an earthquake.

Volcano types

For each mechanism, there is a set of favourable physical parameters maximizing triggering efficiency. They can be divided in two categories: (1) volcanic (e.g. melt viscosity) and (2) seismic (e.g. seismic wave frequency). We examine volcanic parameters first.

Our choice of parameters is developed by capturing both the important complexity associated with the mechanisms whilst remaining simple enough to be applied. From section “Triggering mechanisms”, we see that two parameters, namely magma viscosity and whether the system is open or closed, play critical roles for many mechanisms. The sensitivity of hydrothermal systems make them the key third parameter to be. It is interesting to note that this choice of parameters which naturally arises from our analysis resembles other recent volcano classifications 168 , 169 , despite the different objectives. Our classification currently focuses on subaerial volcanism only. Seismic events do trigger various responses from submarine volcanoes 33 , 170 , 171 , 172 ; however, the current amount of available data are too scarce to be fitted in our classification.

The first parameter is magma viscosity, for which we will consider two limiting cases, namely low and high viscosity. Low viscosities generally correspond to basaltic, crystal poor magma, and are lower than or equal to ~10 4  Pa.s 173 , 174 . We delineate high viscosities as greater than or equal to ~10 5  Pa.s and can be achieved by rhyolitic melt, or through the addition of suspended crystals and bubbles 175 , 176 . Other parameters such as water content or temperature also exert significant control on viscosity. This simplified classification does overlook some major rheological properties (e.g. non-Newtonian behaviour 177 , 178 ) yet captures the magma properties that favour certain mechanisms. For instance, it is very unlikely for a magma with viscosity 10 5  Pa.s to ever experience sloshing, but one with viscosity 10 1  Pa.s will.

The second parameter is whether the system is open or closed to degassing. Open systems are permeable and volatiles can easily escape as bubbles, directly out of magma or through fractures. In contrast, in a closed system, permeability is low and volatiles are trapped and cannot leave. It is quite rare for a volcano to display pure open- or closed-system degassing, yet end members are observed in nature for both cases. Lava lakes or Strombolian-style volcanoes are typical examples of open systems. Many very explosive eruptions show a phase of closed-system degassing with low levels of degassing prior to eruption 169 . It is very common for volcanoes to transition from open to closed through time, and even within a single eruptive phase, via a wide range of processes 154 , 179 , 180 , 181 , 182 , 183 . It is key to note that our definition of open and closed systems relates to shallow volatile-controlling conditions and differ from many petrological studies which refer to the connection between deep magma sources and shallow systems.

The third volcanic parameter considered is the presence of an active hydrothermal system. Arguably every volcano features a hydrothermal system; however, we define distinct end members of how well developed the hydrothermal system is. Some volcanoes display clear, persistent hydrothermal surface activity—e.g. acidic crater lakes, and fumaroles—whereas others show barely any visual sign of activity. For instance, it is quite common for smaller hydrothermal systems to dry due to proximity with magmatic bodies 169 . Thus, for the purpose of this classification, we will consider that a developed hydrothermal system is either present or absent.

We have chosen three parameters, each with two end-member cases, thus yielding 2 3  = 8 possible combinations. Each combination corresponds to a type of volcano that will be susceptible to different triggering mechanisms. For the purpose of brevity, we limit the analysis to the five most common types, shown in Table  1 . For each type, we provide a natural example and a list of the most efficient triggering mechanisms (Table  1 ). Importantly, volcanoes are not fixed in a given type but rather move between different categories with time, for example bimodal volcanoes can erupt two different viscosity magmas (e.g. Yellowstone, USA 184 ). Timescales for these changes span orders of magnitudes from minutes (e.g. bubble nucleation) to millennia (e.g. fractional crystallization).

Earthquakes

The characteristics of the stress perturbation also play a major role in determining whether a given mechanism will trigger activity 6 . These characteristics will result from a combination of (a) the earthquake’s attributes and (b) the volcano’s location with respect to the epicentre. Each earthquake features a unique set of characteristics (e.g. magnitude, focal mechanism, depth), and its effects can be dramatically different from one location to another 185 . This will depend mainly on distance to the epicentre but also direction and local site amplification factors 186 , 187 . Moreover, some physical mechanisms are sensitive to the frequency of incoming seismic waves 115 , 119 . Hence, our choice of parameters should reflect this complexity whilst being simple enough for our classification to be effective. As for section “Volcano types”, we have chosen three keys: (1) peak ground velocity, (2) frequency and (3) static stress change amplitude. We consider two possible end-member values for each one, yielding 2 3  = 8 different scenarios.

The first parameter is peak ground velocity (PGV), referring to the largest shaking speed effectively felt at the magma reservoir location. This value will generally depend on a number of variables such as earthquake magnitude, distance and direction to the hypocentre, or country rock structure. For example, higher magnitudes and shorter distances will generally yield stronger PGVs (and vice versa). The distribution of PGVs can be directional, with stronger PGVs in the rupture direction 147 , 185 . There may also be an increase in PGV at certain great distances from the epicentre due to SmS arrivals 186 , 188 , 189 , 190 . Similarly, seismic waves may be focused by local crustal heterogeneities or amplified by topographic irregularities, thus resulting in significantly higher local PGVs 42 , 187 , 191 , 192 , 193 , 194 . We focus on two possible cases: strong and moderate PGVs. We adopt the criterion that strong PGVs may produce a magmatic response, whereas moderate PGVs only affect hydrothermal systems 15 , 132 (and implicitly assume that there may exist very weak PGVs that do not trigger any response). This choice is motivated by field observations that hydrothermal systems are triggered by much smaller dynamic stresses than magmatic systems 6 , 15 , 51 , 59 , 60 , 195 .

The second parameter is frequency (or alternatively wave-period). Most processes are greatly enhanced when the driving frequency approaches the system’s resonance frequency. The resonance frequency of a magmatic reservoir depends on its size, geometry and the acoustic property of fluid 196 . It is generally in the range 0.001–1 Hz 115 , 119 , 196 . On the other hand, hydrothermal systems have higher resonance frequencies—typically 0.5–5 Hz 196 , 197 . Most local earthquakes exhibit frequencies related to the propagation of surface wave components in the range 1–10 Hz, but only very large earthquakes display frequencies components below 1 Hz. Frequency is particularly relevant for melt and volatiles processes. For instance, sloshing and edifice resonance have been shown to occur only at very low frequencies 115 , 119 . Regarding bubble nucleation and growth processes, experimental results on magma are unavailable, but analogy with other low viscosity fluids suggests that frequency plays a capital role 94 . Regarding permeability changes in hydrothermal systems, frequency of incoming waves is also a crucial parameter, regardless of the mechanism considered 59 , 159 , 198 . Hence, we consider two limiting cases, low and high frequencies, with the low-frequency condition being matched when frequencies lower than 1 Hz are present. These frequency choices encompass two important frequency ranges for seismicity at volcanic systems; so called long-period (LP) earthquakes and tremor (at 2–5 Hz) and very-long period (VLP) seismicity (at 0.1–0.03 Hz) and hence relate to the periods of natural excitation and resonance in the volcanic edifice.

The third parameter is static stress change amplitude. Static stress changes are highly directional, i.e. the type and magnitude of the change will strongly depend on the azimuth with respect to the epicentre. Static stress changes at and around a volcano can be numerically computed 199 , and such approaches have been successfully applied to a multitude of volcanic complexes such as Mt. Fuji 72 , Kilauea 200 , Mauna Loa 69 , Pinatubo 83 , Karymsky 70 , Cerro Negro 29 , 68 , Sierra Negra 75 , Copahue 73 , Vesuvius 67 , Mt. Etna 34 , 201 , Merapi 202 , Sinabung 203 , Mt Aso 74 and Stromboli 34 . We follow the generally accepted view that large static stress changes, both extensional and compressional, have the potential to trigger significant volcanic responses, whereas small stresses will be mostly negligible and leave the system unchanged. It is common to use 10 kPa as a limit under which static stresses can be considered negligible, since this is approximately the magnitude of ocean tidal stresses 6 . For our classification, we restrict our attention to two end-member cases, namely large (>10 kPa) and low (<10 kPa) amplitudes.

A new framework to examine seismic triggering of volcanoes

We have identified five common volcanic types as well as eight different seismic scenarios, yielding a total of 5 × 8 = 40 possible combinations. For each of these 40 cases, we examine the viable seismic-triggering mechanisms with the given conditions. The results are presented in Table  2 , which then constitutes a first-order classification of volcanoes, based on physical mechanisms with the potential for seismic-triggering.

Each column in Table  2 represents one of the five different volcano types defined in section “Volcano types”, each featuring a different set of our three volcanic parameters. Each line in Table  2 represents a different earthquake scenario, based on the three seismic parameters discussed in section “Earthquakes”. Each cell from Table  2 therefore illustrates a unique combination of an earthquake scenario with a specific volcano type, and lists the relevant mechanisms. This does not indicate that these mechanisms will necessarily happen in the case of a corresponding earthquake, but is rather an indication of which mechanisms are physically realistic with the given set of parameters. By extension, absent mechanisms are unlikely to trigger eruptions.

The first key outcome from Table  2 is that there is no empty column, meaning that all the volcano types presented may be seismically triggered. This result matches previous historical observations 8 , 10 , 16 , 33 , 56 that seismic triggering can happen for any type of volcano, in any tectonic setting. Furthermore, recent observations suggest that fluid movements dominate the response in the case of low-viscosity systems, whereas for more viscous systems, elastic processes may play a more important role 17 , 204 . This discrepancy is also captured in Table  2 : the low-viscosity columns feature many more mechanisms associated with fluid movements (e.g., sloshing, advective overpressure, shaking-induced migration) than the high-viscosity cases.

Table  2 also reinforces the role of hydrothermal systems. Many studies highlight that hydrothermal areas are particularly sensitive to seismic perturbations 6 , 42 , 48 , 52 , 53 , 128 , 156 , 170 . Hydrothermal systems sit at a strategic location and constitute a key link between magmatic reservoirs and their environments. As such, it is important to carefully examine their role in eruption triggering 4 , 138 , and in particular, as intermediate between tectonic earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

The second key observation from Table  2 is the disparity in the numbers of mechanisms, with values ranging between zero and six. It is tempting to directly relate the number of mechanisms in a cell to the likelihood of a seismically triggered eruption to occur, but this would most likely be erroneous. Table  2 does not include any quality assessment, i.e. it does not mention how efficient and how well understood is each mechanism. Some mechanisms are supported by an extensive range of theoretical and experimental data (e.g. static triggers, permeability changes in hydrothermal systems). Others rely on analogy or idealized assumptions (e.g. advective overpressure, bubble nucleation, falling crystal roofs). Section “Triggering mechanisms” provides some information on what supporting data are available for each mechanism and more quantitative considerations can be found in previous reviews 4 , 6 , 59 . A future improvement of this work could be to define and compute an effectiveness parameter for each mechanism. Another interesting future step would be to consider whether different mechanisms may occur simultaneously, interact and possibly compound their effects 64 .

It is a delicate task to assess whether a given eruption was seismically triggered 6 , 24 , but it is even more challenging to identify the responsible mechanism(s). The three volcanic parameters presented here can be assessed for most eruptions, thus constraining the possible mechanisms. These mechanisms may then be tested for validity. For instance, static stress changes can be computed numerically 35 , 69 , 72 , 73 , occurrence of resonant oscillations can be measured, crystal and bubble textures may retain a signature of nucleation events, and hydrothermal processes can be constrained with seismic monitoring 205 and electromagnetic surveys 206 . Constraining the triggering mechanisms for a given type of volcano will be useful for future statistical studies, but may also inform and guide monitoring strategies and hazard assessment.

The importance of critical state

A significant number of cells in Table  2 are empty (six, excluding the last line). This corroborates observations that seismically triggered eruptions are a rare occurrence 7 . One of the reasons why earthquakes do not trigger more volcanic eruptions, and why some very large earthquakes trigger very little activity (e.g. Sumatra M9.2 2004 earthquake 6 ), is that the range of conditions where seismic triggering is possible forms a very narrow window that is not often met 7 , 35 . In particular, many studies have highlighted the need for a volcano to already be in a critical state in order to be seismically triggered 4 , 6 , 7 , 10 , 13 , 19 , 25 , 27 , 32 , 33 , 48 , 56 , 57 , 137 , 207 . Conceptually, a volcano may be considered in a critical state if it is close to erupting. This concept is particularly difficult to quantify, since criticality may take different forms at different volcanoes. For instance, Manga and Brodsky 6 compare the overpressure in the magma chamber to the necessary tensile stress to initiate and sustain dyking to broadly estimate the degree of criticality. Bebbington and Marzocchi 7 propose a “clock advance” mechanism, similar to what is found in the triggered-seismicity literature 208 . In this view, earthquakes merely accelerate the countdown to the next, inevitable eruption. Seismically triggered eruptions are then a consequence of a volcano being particularly advanced in its cycle towards eruption. For instance, the 1996 simultaneous eruptions of Karymsky Volcano and Akademia Nauk volcano occurred 2 days after an M w 7.1 earthquake, but also marked the end of 14 years of continuous inflation 70 . This concept also offers an explanation to why the M9.2 Sumatra 2004 earthquake did not seem to trigger any eruption, despite being located in one of the most active volcanic zones in the world 6 , 33 . It is possible that none of the nearby volcanoes were close to erupting at the time. Although rarely reported, it appears that volcanoes that are not in a critical state can still be seismically triggered into eruption. For example, La Femina et al. 29 describe the deposit of an eruption that would have seemingly not been possible to erupt without an earthquake. It is a formidable task to provide a universal definition of critical state, and something to consider for government agencies when assigning alert levels 209 as it is important for seismic triggering. At the very least, the presence of magma within reasonable distance to the surface appears to be a necessary condition, without which the cases presented in Table  2 are less relevant.

The discussion above highlights the difficulty to define what constitutes a seismically triggered eruption. An eruption is the culmination of a cascade of intertwined processes (magma generation, transport, storage, pressurization, fragmentation, etc…), and a single tectonic event cannot be held responsible for this entire chain. Earthquakes may have a less direct influence, and impact many of the different steps towards eruption (e.g. magma generation or melt segregation). For instance, seismic waves may play a key role in unlocking mushes 210 , 211 , 212 , 213 or promoting diapirs via instabilities 214 . These processes will in turn exert some control of the timing and style of eruption, but here we consider that such mechanisms do not trigger eruptions stricto sensu and thus lie beyond the scope of this study. We do nonetheless acknowledge their important role. Similarly, we mentioned the case of external triggers in section “External triggers”—sequences of events where an earthquake triggers a non-volcanic phenomenon which itself causes an eruption, and why we do not take them into account in our classification. Furthermore, for both the 1707 Fuji and 1991 Pinatubo eruptions, it was suggested that the static stress perturbation from an earthquake allowed basaltic magma to intrude into a dacitic reservoir, leading to magma mixing and eventually a Plinian eruption 72 , 83 . The static stress mechanism does fit within our classification, but it did not trigger the eruption per se. An elegant solution proposed by Marzocchi 57 is to use the term “promote” rather than “trigger” in order to emphasize the complex nature of these processes.

Changes in unrest vs. eruption

A key observation from natural events is that earthquakes trigger a change in unrest more often than a magmatic eruption 17 , 22 , 27 , 28 , 42 , 215 , 216 . Here, we adopt the general view that unrest refers to any deviation from baseline behaviour and can take various geophysical or geochemical forms 168 , 217 , 218 . In the special case of seismically triggered unrest, volcanic seismicity is, by far, the most commonly reported phenomenon 42 , 45 , 62 , 122 , 132 , 219 , 220 . Other reported processes may include increased degassing 17 , 47 , changes in fumarolic activity 45 , 48 , thermal activity 26 , 27 , 28 or gas chemistry 46 . Reports and information about unrest are not as well reported as eruption data, due to the subjective definition of “baseline behaviour” or the lesser impact unrest may cause to surrounding communities 218 . Yet, unrest episodes are generally directly identified as being related to the earthquakes (most often on the basis of spatio-temporal coincidence with the passage of seismic waves), whereas eruptions generally receive more careful statistical and physical analyses before a correlation is established 24 . Seismically triggered unrest is thus quite commonly accepted whereas seismically triggered eruptions retain some controversy.

For our purposes, a decisive question is whether the mechanisms responsible for triggered-unrest differ from the ones discussed previously. Many reports highlight that the onset of unrest seems to match seismic waves arrival, suggesting a dynamic origin 22 , 47 , 48 , 52 , 132 , 202 . For instance, triggered seismicity is likely caused by small changes in permeability in hydrothermal systems, allowing geothermal fluids to migrate and change the local stress state 90 . Therefore, unrest may be triggered without the magmatic system being in a critical state, hence explaining the more frequent occurrence of triggered-unrest compared to triggered-eruptions.

Future directions

Our framework highlights that hydrothermal systems may be more sensitive than magma to changes induced by seismic activity. This could lead to heightened unrest in the hydrothermal system and to eruption if the magmatic system is in a critical state. The link between hydrothermal systems and magmatic systems is a key area for future research, with a particular focus on the role of fracture formation, fluid migration and wave propagation through the hydrothermal and magmatic systems and in particular the magma-hydrothermal transition zone. Increasing awareness about the interplay between the hydrothermal and magmatic systems might improve volcano monitoring outcomes in the aftermath of large earthquakes.

Monitoring approaches might more specifically address changes at hydrothermal systems and magmatic systems. Ground displacement studies and volcano geodesy, seismicity and tomography, geochemistry and petrology will soon have resolutions high enough to spatially and temporally distinguish the triggered effects at hydrothermal and magmatic systems. Regarding the mechanisms with the magma, current advances in high-temperature experimental facilities now allow for tests to be run at natural conditions. We suggest that this is an important step towards refining our understanding of the processes at stake here. In combination with further and more detailed analysis of ground monitoring and satellite data, the different volcano and hydrothermal effects might become distinguished following different types of earthquakes. Finally, as our records of earthquakes and heightened volcano unrest expands, it remains necessary to regularly update statistical and modelling analyses.

Data availability

The authors declare that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the paper.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Sriparna Saha for her help in improving the quality of the figures. G.S., B.K., and T.W. were supported by a Marsden grant. A.J. was funded by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) Strategic Science Investment Fund (SSIF).

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G.S. drafted the initial MS and figures, with the participation of B.K. T.W. provided background on natural observations and statistical significance. M.I. provided background on physical mechanisms. A.J. provided seismological context. All authors contributed to the design of the ideas presented and the final version of the paper.

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Seropian, G., Kennedy, B.M., Walter, T.R. et al. A review framework of how earthquakes trigger volcanic eruptions. Nat Commun 12 , 1004 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21166-8

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Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō, the easternmost of Kilauea's volcanic vents, spews molten lava on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Can earthquakes trigger volcano eruptions? Here's the science.

Possible links between these two geologic titans have long fascinated—and divided—scientists. Here’s what the latest studies have to say.

Tectonic earthquakes are among the most powerful natural phenomena on the planet. It’s no surprise, then, that they are sometimes suspected of being able to trigger volcanic eruptions .

Earth’s volcanoes are often located in seismically excitable parts of the world. Just take the so-called Ring of Fire , which is technically a horseshoe-shaped region that traces the edges of tectonic plates around the Pacific basin. This area hosts 90 percent of the world’s recorded earthquakes and 75 percent of all active volcanoes.

In such seismic hotspots, eruptions and earthquakes are often taking place at roughly the same time—but that’s exactly what you would expect. Despite frequent breathless speculation online, you can’t automatically assume that there’s a connection between a given quake and a subsequent eruption.

“The volcano may have already been preparing to erupt, or it’s already been erupting for a long time,” says volcanologist Janine Krippner .

Still, the question of whether earthquakes can cause volcanic eruptions is a serious research topic that experts have been investigating for centuries. And multiple lines of evidence from recent studies suggest that a connection could potentially exist in certain situations. So, where do scientists currently stand on the issue? We’ve got you covered.

Joining up some dodgy dots

Atsuko Namiki , associate professor of geosciences at Hiroshima University, highlights a few geophysical studies with data that suggest a connection. A 1993 paper, for example, links a magnitude 7.3 quake in California to volcanic and geothermal rumblings immediately afterward. And a 2012 study reckons that a magnitude 8.7 earthquake in Japan in 1707 forced deeper magma up into a shallow chamber, triggering a huge blast at Mount Fuji 49 days later.

For Hungry Minds

Even the ever-cautious U.S. Geological Survey says that sometimes, yes, earthquakes can trigger eruptions. The agency suggests that some historical examples imply that an earthquake’s severe ground shaking, or its ability to otherwise change the local pressure surrounding the magmatic source nearby, can trigger volcanic unrest. They cite the magnitude 7.2 earthquake on Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano on November 29, 1975, which was quickly followed by a short-lived eruption.

But there are problems. First, as the USGS stresses, the triggering mechanisms for such events are not well understood, and papers linking quakes to later eruptions can really only speculate.

Second, it’s possible that the timing in all these examples was just a coincidence. Geologists must understand the specific triggering and rule out chance before a connection can be definitively made–and Earth’s geological complexities make both extremely difficult.

Darwin’s accidental deception

Statistical analyses are attempting to tackle the chance problem head-on. A 1998 Nature paper investigated whether magnitude 8.0 or larger quakes could trigger explosive volcanism up to 500 miles away from the epicenter within five days. Using data from the 16 th century to the present, its authors found that these types of eruptions happened four times more often than chance alone could explain.

Similarly, a 2009 paper used historical data to show that that magnitude 8.0 quakes in Chile are associated with significantly elevated eruption rates in certain volcanoes as far as 310 miles away. The problem is that these sorts of historical data aren’t exactly great.

Related Photos: Learn More About the World’s Volcanoes

“Major earthquakes and large volcanic eruptions are both relatively infrequent events, and scientists have only been reliably keeping these records for the last half century or more, depending on the region,” says Theresa Sawi , an undergraduate researcher in geophysics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Many data points in the past come from fairly ambiguous news reports and journal entries. David Pyle , a professor of volcanology at the University of Oxford, points out that one of the earliest writers to link earthquakes and eruptions was none other than Charles Darwin .

In 1840, Darwin gathered eyewitness information on some minor changes at Chilean volcanoes following the powerful quake there in 1836. It’s unclear if any eruptions took place, but “nonetheless, all of these 'events' ended up in the catalog of volcanic eruptions and now appear to offer evidence for earthquake triggering,” Pyle says.

Squeezing out toothpaste

Sawi is a coauthor on a more recent statistical analysis in the Bulletin of Volcanology that tries to circumvent this issue. This study focused only on more scientifically robust data from 1964 onward, and it looked at smaller quakes of at least a magnitude 6.0 that took place 500 miles from a volcanic eruption.

Sawi’s study found that there was a 5 to 12 percent increase in the number of explosive eruptions two months to two years following a major quake.

The team identified 30 volcanoes that may have at some point undergone a potentially triggered eruption. On a scale of days, the team found no evidence for triggering that couldn’t be explained by chance alone. That result actually goes against one of the findings of a 2006 review featuring Michael Manga , a coauthor on the new paper.

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“It's nice to see researchers not being afraid to make conclusions that go against their previous work,” said Oliver Lamb , a volcanologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “This is how science should work, really.”

Curiously, Sawi’s study found that there was a 5 to 12 percent increase in the number of explosive eruptions two months to two years following a major quake. This jump is both surprising and interesting, according to Lamb, but it’s also pretty small.

Jackie Caplan-Auerbach , an associate professor of seismology and volcanology at Western Washington University, says that the paper “actually highlights how unlikely it is that a quake could trigger an eruption.”

How, then, could this long-term trend be explained? What may happen during those months is that ruptures caused by quakes open up new pathways for viscous magma to follow, gradually, to the surface. The shaking, over time, could also create additional bubbles in the magma, which increases its pressure–a bit like shaking up a can of soda.

Perhaps the movement of rock can squeeze magma bodies like a tube of toothpaste, Sawi says, slowly forcing the magma out via volcanic exit routes. Or the quake may stretch the rock around a volcano’s magma reservoir, which would prompt gases to bubble out of the molten rock and increase the pressure in the reservoir.

Honey, I shrunk the volcano

Caplan-Auerbach suspects that if a quake does trigger an eruption, then the volcano has got to be primed and ready to go when it strikes. But while it might seem “intuitively reasonable that large earthquakes might trigger activity at a volcano that is poised to erupt, the empirical evidence for this link is rather thin,” Pyle says.

Some scientists, like Namiki, are hoping to find such evidence. She and her colleagues design models of volcanic systems in the lab and shake them about to examine how triggering could physically take place.

In a 2016 study , his team used syrups with varying crystal numbers, bubble quantities, and so forth to simulate various magma reservoirs . They found that at the resonant frequency, the frequency at which an object can naturally vibrates, the back-and-forth sloshing of the “magma” was most prominent. Bubbles joined up, and the frothy foam atop collapsed. In a real volcano, this would allow hot gases to readily escape from the magma, increasing the reservoir’s pressure and potentially pushing the volcano to erupt.

In 2018, the team also published a study of a gel model of a volcano injected with fluids simulating different types of magma. They found that shaking the model caused the fluids to move around faster than they otherwise would. However, where the fluids went was tied to their buoyancy and storage depths. Less buoyant fluids moved sideways or downward, which in a real volcano would make an eruption less likely. But bubbly fluids at shallow depths ascended, something that could lead to an eruption.

Keeping their eyes to the ground

It’s certainly not straightforward, and Namiki notes that skepticism about eruptions triggered by earthquakes is perfectly natural. However, Eleonora Rivalta , group leader of earthquake and volcanic physics research at GFZ Potsdam, suggests that the mood may be slowly shifting toward the possibility of a connection.

“While the wider scientific community may still be a bit skeptical, many volcano geophysicists are now convinced volcanoes may indeed react to earthquakes with a variety of responses,” she says. She emphasizes, however, that the smoking gun is still missing–specifically, a clear demonstration of how exactly an eruption was triggered at a specific volcano by a specific earthquake.

There are other avenues to explore outside statistics and lab simulations. Pyle suggests that if certain volcanoes are thought to be triggered by quakes, then the volcanic debris they eject could hold clues about the state of the magma reservoir prior to their outburst. That may reveal if the quake really did make a significant difference, or it may show that they were primed to erupt anyway and the quake just accelerated the countdown.

For Sawi, the way forward is clear: “Increased monitoring of volcanoes worldwide, especially those historically under-studied volcanoes, would help provide the data needed to begin recognizing patterns and, yes, triggers that could indicate a heightened probability of eruption.”

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Earthquake Essay for Students and Children

500+ Words Essay on Earthquake

Simply speaking, Earthquake means the shaking of the Earth’s surface. It is a sudden trembling of the surface of the Earth. Earthquakes certainly are a terrible natural disaster. Furthermore, Earthquakes can cause huge damage to life and property. Some Earthquakes are weak in nature and probably go unnoticed. In contrast, some Earthquakes are major and violent. The major Earthquakes are almost always devastating in nature. Most noteworthy, the occurrence of an Earthquake is quite unpredictable. This is what makes them so dangerous.

Types of Earthquake

Tectonic Earthquake: The Earth’s crust comprises of the slab of rocks of uneven shapes. These slab of rocks are tectonic plates. Furthermore, there is energy stored here. This energy causes tectonic plates to push away from each other or towards each other. As time passes, the energy and movement build up pressure between two plates.

Therefore, this enormous pressure causes the fault line to form. Also, the center point of this disturbance is the focus of the Earthquake. Consequently, waves of energy travel from focus to the surface. This results in shaking of the surface.

Volcanic Earthquake: This Earthquake is related to volcanic activity. Above all, the magnitude of such Earthquakes is weak. These Earthquakes are of two types. The first type is Volcano-tectonic earthquake. Here tremors occur due to injection or withdrawal of Magma. In contrast, the second type is Long-period earthquake. Here Earthquake occurs due to the pressure changes among the Earth’s layers.

Collapse Earthquake: These Earthquakes occur in the caverns and mines. Furthermore, these Earthquakes are of weak magnitude. Undergrounds blasts are probably the cause of collapsing of mines. Above all, this collapsing of mines causes seismic waves. Consequently, these seismic waves cause an Earthquake.

Explosive Earthquake: These Earthquakes almost always occur due to the testing of nuclear weapons. When a nuclear weapon detonates, a big blast occurs. This results in the release of a huge amount of energy. This probably results in Earthquakes.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Effects of Earthquakes

First of all, the shaking of the ground is the most notable effect of the Earthquake. Furthermore, ground rupture also occurs along with shaking. This results in severe damage to infrastructure facilities. The severity of the Earthquake depends upon the magnitude and distance from the epicenter. Also, the local geographical conditions play a role in determining the severity. Ground rupture refers to the visible breaking of the Earth’s surface.

Another significant effect of Earthquake is landslides. Landslides occur due to slope instability. This slope instability happens because of Earthquake.

Earthquakes can cause soil liquefaction. This happens when water-saturated granular material loses its strength. Therefore, it transforms from solid to a liquid. Consequently, rigid structures sink into the liquefied deposits.

Earthquakes can result in fires. This happens because Earthquake damages the electric power and gas lines. Above all, it becomes extremely difficult to stop a fire once it begins.

Earthquakes can also create the infamous Tsunamis. Tsunamis are long-wavelength sea waves. These sea waves are caused by the sudden or abrupt movement of large volumes of water. This is because of an Earthquake in the ocean. Above all, Tsunamis can travel at a speed of 600-800 kilometers per hour. These tsunamis can cause massive destruction when they hit the sea coast.

In conclusion, an Earthquake is a great and terrifying phenomenon of Earth. It shows the frailty of humans against nature. It is a tremendous occurrence that certainly shocks everyone. Above all, Earthquake lasts only for a few seconds but can cause unimaginable damage.

FAQs on Earthquake

Q1 Why does an explosive Earthquake occurs?

A1 An explosive Earthquake occurs due to the testing of nuclear weapons.

Q2 Why do landslides occur because of Earthquake?

A2 Landslides happen due to slope instability. Most noteworthy, this slope instability is caused by an Earthquake.

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What are the effects of earthquakes and volcanoes on people and the environment?

Cambridge iGCSE Geography > The Natural Environment > Earthquakes and Volcanoes > What are the effects of earthquakes and volcanoes on people and the environment?

The impacts of earthquakes and volcanoes can be categorised into two main groups: primary and secondary effects .

Primary effects are the direct results of an earthquake or volcanic eruption. These might include the collapse of structures owing to seismic shaking or fatalities resulting from pyroclastic flows during a volcanic event.

Secondary effects , on the other hand, are those that follow the primary effects . They occur as a consequence of the initial impacts of the earthquake or volcano . For example, an earthquake might rupture gas lines, leading to subsequent fires, or the destruction of homes in a volcanic eruption might lead to long-term homelessness.

These classifications help understand and analyse the different impact levels of earthquakes and volcanoes on human life, infrastructure, and the environment.

The Effects of Volcanoes and Earthquakes

Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes can affect people and the environment. Effects include:

• Loss of life and injury: This can occur immediately due to collapsing buildings or falling ash. In the subsequent days and weeks, the loss of life may continue due to contaminated water or the spread of disease.
• Collapse or destruction of buildings: This can leave people homeless for prolonged periods, ranging from months to years after the event.
• Impact on transport network: Roads, bridges, and railways may suffer damage or destruction, slowing down aid delivery to affected areas.
• Loss of jobs and businesses: The destruction or damage of factories and offices can significantly impact the local economy.
• Loss of crops: This leads to food shortages, directly affecting farmers’ income and the overall food supply chain.
• Damage to power and water supply: This can disrupt the provision of essential services, particularly affecting the supply of clean water and consequently public health.
• Environmental Damage: The eruption may cause the loss of vegetation and habitats, and the presence of ash can even have broader effects on the climate.
• Closure of Airports: Flying through ash clouds is perilous for jet planes due to potential engine failure, leading to flight cancellations. This can further hamper relief efforts and disrupt international travel.

Although volcanoes and earthquakes can have similar effects, unlike earthquakes, volcanic eruptions can affect people and places hundreds of miles away. In addition to this, volcanic eruptions can even affect global climate.

Factors Affecting the Impact of Earthquakes

Various factors influence the impact and damage caused by earthquakes. Understanding these can help in risk assessment, planning , and mitigation. Here are the main factors that affect the impact of earthquakes:

• Strength and Aftershocks: The magnitude of the earthquake and subsequent aftershocks can determine the damage caused.
• Depth of the Earthquake: Deeper earthquakes tend to have their energy absorbed by the crust above, often reducing the surface impact.
• Distance from the Epicentre: The further a location is from the epicentre, the weaker the seismic waves and the less damage likely.
• Geology of the Area: Areas with looser rocks, such as sedimentary rocks, are more prone to liquefaction , causing structures to sink into the ground.
• Quality of Building Materials: Buildings made from poor-quality materials are more likely to collapse.
• Building Density: Higher building density increases the risk of swaying buildings affecting others.
• Building Height: Taller buildings are more likely to sway and collapse.
• Population Density: High-density areas may see more casualties during an earthquake.
• Time of Day: The timing of an earthquake can affect its impact; for example, at night, people in older residential areas may be more at risk.
• Secondary Hazards: These include tsunamis near coasts, landslides and rockfalls in mountainous regions, and fires due to broken gas pipes in urban areas.
• Contamination: Water supplies can become contaminated when mixed with sewage, leading to health issues.

Factors Affecting the Impact of Volcanic Eruptions

As with earthquakes, there are many factors that affect the impact of volcanic eruptions:

• Type of Volcanic Eruption: Different eruptions (e.g., explosive vs effusive) can have varying impacts, with explosive eruptions often causing more damage.
• Magnitude of the Eruption: The scale and intensity of the eruption determine the amount of lava, ash, and gases released.
• Proximity to Populated Areas: Volcanoes near densely populated areas can cause more casualties and property damage.
• Prevailing Wind Direction: The direction of the wind can carry ash and gases toward or away from populated areas, affecting air quality and visibility.
• Preparedness and Early Warning Systems: Communities with better preparedness and warning systems can minimize the loss of life and property.
• Geology and Topography: The local geology and landscape can influence the flow of lava and the spread of ash, affecting the areas impacted.
• Volcano ’s History: Understanding a volcano’s previous eruption patterns may help predict its behaviour and potential impact.
• Climate and Weather Conditions: Weather can affect the dispersal of volcanic materials and the subsequent secondary effects, such as mudflows.
• Secondary Hazards: These might include lahars, pyroclastic flows, landslides, tsunamis (if near a body of water), and acid rain, which can have wide-reaching impacts.
• Economic Factors : Wealthier areas might have better infrastructure and resources to cope with a volcanic eruption, whereas poorer areas may suffer more.
• Time of Eruption: Similar to earthquakes, the time of day can affect the response and impact (e.g., nighttime eruptions may catch people unawares).
• Health: The local population’s health can also affect the impact of volcanic eruptions. High incidences of respiratory conditions and other health problems can exacerbate the effect on the local population.

Primary and Secondary Effects

Primary effects include immediate damage like the collapse of structures, while secondary effects include subsequent consequences such as fires from ruptured gas lines or long-term homelessness.

Human and Infrastructure Impact

Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions can lead to loss of life, destruction of buildings, loss of jobs and businesses, and damage to transport networks, power, and water supply.

Environmental Consequences

Volcanoes and earthquakes can cause environmental damage like loss of vegetation and habitats, effects on climate, and closure of airports due to ash clouds.

Factors Influencing Impact

Various factors such as strength, depth, proximity to populated areas, quality of building materials, and preparedness can affect the overall impact of both earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.

Unique Effects of Volcanoes

Unlike earthquakes, volcanic eruptions can affect areas hundreds of miles away and have unique impacts such as lahars, pyroclastic flows, acid rain, and global climate effects.

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Earthquakes and Volcanoes

Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are incredible and dramatic natural events. On this page you can learn more about the science behind them:

• Bárðarbunga-Holuhraun Eruption Learn about the 2014 Bárðarbunga eruption and the massive Holuhraun lava field that it created.
• Fascinating Facts Discover interesting facts that you might not know about earthquakes and volcanoes.

Bárðarbunga-Holuhraun Eruption

Iceland sits on crack in the surface of the Earth where two tectonic plates (large blocks that make up the outer most layer of the Earth) are ripping apart from each other. These two blocks are moving apart at around 2 cm per year (approximately the rate that your finger nails grow) and are slowly widening the Atlantic Ocean; increasing the distance from Europe to North America. As the tectonic plates split apart magma (molten rock) wells up from below forming volcanoes, which creates new land in between. This rifting process is happening all the way down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean beneath the sea. But at Iceland we see the process on land because a hot upwelling from deep within the Earth also sits beneath Iceland, pushing it upwards out of the sea and making the area even more volcanically active.

Iceland has over 30 active volcanic systems, which have a central volcano in the middle with long cracks spreading outwards to the north and south (fissure swarms). Magma (molten rock) can erupt from the central volcano itself, or travel through the cracks of the fissure swarm to create long lines of eruptions far from the volcano itself.

The main volcanic rift zones in Iceland, with Bárðarbunga volcano beneath the Vatnajökull ice sheet.

When you think of Icelandic volcanoes, the one you will probably remember is the eruption of the volcano with the long, hard to pronounce name that had news readers getting their tongues in a twist: Eyjafjallajökull, which sits under a glacier in southern Iceland. This volcano erupted in 2010 and was all over the news because it produced so much ash that it grounded 100,000 flights and closed European air space. The main reason why this eruption was so ash heavy was due to the interaction of the hot magma erupting under the cold overlying ice. But a couple of years later in 2014 there was another eruption in Iceland, at a volcano called Bárðarbunga. It was the largest eruption in Iceland in over 200 years, and was 10 times bigger than than the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, but it didn't ground a single flight.

The eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in 2010 created a large ash plume that blew across western Europe .

Bárðarbunga volcano is right in the middle of Iceland in the remote and uninhabited highlands. It sits underneath the massive Vatnajökull glacier, covered by around 800 m of thick ice. Scientists first knew something interesting was happening at Bárðarbunga in August of 2014 when hundreds of tiny earthquakes were detected within the volcano deep below the ice. Teams rushed out to deploy more seismic instruments to record the earthquakes and determine where they were happening more accurately. Scientists were flown up onto the glacier in helicopters, before speeding around on snow scooters to get the essential instruments out as quickly as possible.

Bárðarbunga volcano beneath the Vatnajökull ice sheet.

Over the next two weeks the country watched closely as the 30,000 tiny earthquakes tracked the underground movement of the magma as it cracked a 46 km long path through the earth’s crust. The earthquake activity moved gradually northwards, away from the volcano at 6 km down within the earth, as authorities and scientists tried to guess where and when the magma would move upwards and erupt at the surface. Would the eruption happen under the glacier producing an ash heavy eruption like Eyjafjallajökull, or would it travel far enough away from the glacier that it wouldn't interact with the ice? Or maybe it wouldn't erupt at all, and the molten rock would stay deep within the earth, cooling and solidifying to form an igneous intrusion? The magma movement was also tracked using GPS and satellite measurements. The GPS were able to measure ground movement caused by the magma pushing into the earth and shoving material outwards to either side by up to 1.5 m. This helped scientists to understand the shape that the magma was flowing in—a vertical sheet of molten rock known as a dyke, about 5 m wide.

3-D visualisation of earthquake epicentres through time as the magmatic dyke propagated from the Bárðarbunga central volcano to the Holuhraun eruption site.

The dyke advanced in rapid bursts with an average speed of 2 km per hour, reaching speeds of up to 4.7 km per hour. In the end the dyke travelled 46 km away from the feeder volcano Bárðarbunga before erupting at the surface on a river flood plain away from the glacier. The eruption, which was named Holuhraun, saw runny fluid lava thrown up to 200 m into the air (higher than Big Ben!), in pulsating fire fountains, before flowing away as rivers of molten rock. There was no central eruption point, instead the eruption happened all the way down the length of a 1.5 km long eruptive fissure that over time concentrated down to a few craters, and finally to one main crater called Baugur. The amount of thermal energy the eruption produced was tremendous; equivalent to the energy of a Hiroshima sized atomic bomb being set off every 2 minutes!

The Bárðarbunga-Holuhraun eruption in action, with a lava flow extending across the sandur and volcanic gases issuing from the volcanic vent.

Footage of the 2014 Bárðarbunga-Holuhraun eruption.

The eruption lasted for 6 months, eventually stopping in February 2015. By then it had produced 1.6 km 3 of lava, covering an area of 85 km 2 – large enough to cover the city of Cambridge twice ( how much of your area would it have covered? ). Because there was no interaction with ice, only a minute amount of ash was produced. However it did release around 11 M tones of SO 2 – more than the whole of Europe produces in a year! This was the main hazard of the eruption as the gas was blown around on the wind affecting large numbers of the population. Ground level concentrations of SO 2 exceeded health limits over most of Iceland for days to weeks, with the high concentrations of SO 2 can cause breathing difficulties and eye irritation.

The extent of the Holuhraun lava flow in red.

It's very important to carefully monitor volcanoes to try and understand what kind of eruption they might have and what hazards that could present. The Holuhraun eruption was not hazardous to planes since it was an effusive eruption and it didn’t create a huge eruption column, but if the eruption had happened under the ice it would have been a completely different story. Measuring the tiny earthquakes that happen in volcanoes, gives us a powerful tool we can use to see inside the earth and track where molten rock is moving beneath the surface. Keeping track of these observations can help inform public bodies, aiding their decision making and their planning of hazard mitigation strategies.

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Fascinating Facts

Iceland facts.

• The population of Iceland is 330,000 , or approximately the population of Reading.
• Two-thirds of the Icelandic population live in the capital city, Reykjavik .
• More than one million people visit Iceland each year on holiday, about three times its population.
• All of Iceland's heating and electricity is renewable, either from hydroelectric or geothermal methods.
• The UK went to war with Iceland once over fish!
• Good morning in Icelandic is ‘Góðan dag’ .
• An earthquake swarm precedes eruption of the Icelandic volcano Hekla by 30 minutes, which is unhelpful if you are on the volcano, but enough time to get the news helicopters in the air from Reykjavik!
• There are about 130 volcanoes in Iceland.

Bárðarbunga- Holuhraun eruption facts

• The Holuhraun lava flow covers an area of 84 km 2 .
• During eruption, lava fountains sprayed lava up to 150 m high , which is taller than Big Ben!
• The eruption released vast amounts of thermal energy, equivalent to: releasing a Hiroshima atomic bomb every minute (in the first month), and every two minutes (on average over the six-month-long eruption).
• The Holuhraun lava flow released 100 million tonnes of sulphur dioxide, which is equivalent to the annual emissions of Europe.
• More than 30,000  small earthquakes were detected accompanying the magma intrusion.
• The peak rate of magma release was around  500 tonnes per second .
• Members of the Volcano Seismology Group from the University of Cambridge were the first people to see the eruption with their own eyes. They tracked the eruption in collaboration with the Icelandic Met Office and the University of Iceland during the first weeks of the eruption before they had to (reluctantly) go home.
• Instruments were placed so close to the eruption site that they had to be rescued from the advancing lava.
• The intrusion, and subsequent lava flow, was monitored in real-time by more than 100 seismometers, more than 30 GPS instruments, three satellites, and four webcams.

Eyjafjallajökull eruption facts

• The Eyjafjallajökull eruption ejected ash 35,000 feet into the air.
• The Eyjafjallajökull ash cloud grounded over 100,000 flights, which cost the aviation industry an estimated   £1.1 billion .
• To volcano’s name is pronounced: "EY - A - FYAT - LA - YO - KUTL" .
• The eruption caused several glacial floods (jökulhaups) when hot magma melted ice in the overlying glacier.
• Small earthquakes were detected by the Cambridge Volcano Seismology Group down to a depth of 30 km below the surface, as molten rock stored at depth migrated during the eruption.

Earthquake and seismology facts

• The magnitude scale of earthquakes is logarithmic, so every step up the scale is an earthquake ten times bigger. A magnitude 2.0 event is, therefore, ten million times smaller than the 2004 boxing day earthquake (magnitude 9.0).
• Humans have only ever dug to a depth of 12 km; less than 1% of the Earth's total thickness. The only reason we know anything about the internal structure of the Earth is because earthquake waves travel through it, and become modified by the material that they travel through.
• The United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that several million earthquakes occur in the Earth each year. Many go undetected because they hit remote areas or have very small magnitudes. The NEIC (National Earthquake Information Centre) now locates about 50 earthquakes each day (larger than magnitude 4.5), or around 20,000 a year.
• We get earthquakes in the UK, a few every couple of days. However, they are just very small, generally less than magnitude 2, which means that they are just too small for people to feel.
• The largest earthquake to ever happen in the UK was a magnitude 6.1 off the east coast of England in the North Sea.
• The most damaging earthquake in the UK in recent history was in 1884 near Colchester.  We don’t know exactly how large it was (probably around magnitude 4.5), but historical records show that some 1200 buildings required repairs, and three to five people were killed.

Volcano facts

• There are about 1500 active volcanoes in the world.
• 300 million, or one-in-twenty, people in the world live within the 'danger range' of an active volcano.
• About 1,500 different volcanoes have erupted over the past 10,000 years, but only about 60 erupt each year. On any given day, there are about 20 volcanoes erupting somewhere in the world.
• Many volcanoes are underwater and erupt onto the sea floor.

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Volcanoes and Their Characteristics Essay

Works cited.

Volcanoes always presented a broad area for researches in terms of their close relationship between their forms, structures, the styles of their eruption, and the mineral composition of their magma and lava. In the following paper, different types of volcanic mountains will be examined and compared in order to make conclusions concerning the relationship between the volcanoes’ structure and their features. Generally, after evaluating data, it appears that depending on the process of volcano formation it may be related to one of the four existing volcano types which are known for their different characteristics and “conduct” while eruptions.

First of all, speaking about different types of volcanoes’ structure, it should be mentioned that depending on their geographic location and, thus, appurtenance to a certain lithosphere platform with varied features, volcanoes demonstrate different ways of eruption ranging from the so-called “quiet” ones to the very disastrous and dangerous (Furniss 56). In general, volcanoes are subdivided into the following categories: shield volcanoes, composite volcanoes, lava domes or plug domes, and, finally, cinder cones which can be distinguished by their sizes, forms, and functioning. All of these volcano types have their peculiarities in structure and way of eruption.

In addition, the very notion of “volcano” is to be explained. A volcano is a geological landform that is made up of two parts – the upper one called a cone, and the lower one called fissure where volcanic material is accumulated (Hess 391). According to Furniss (57),

The vast majority of volcanoes are found along the boundaries of tectonic plates. Convergent boundaries, where the plates are crashing into each other, host around 90 percent of what we generally think of as volcanoes. Here, as one plate is pushed below another–a process is known as subduction–it melts, the resultant magma rising and causing volcanic eruptions. Volcanoes also form away from plate boundaries, above so-called volcanic hotspots.

Volcanoes are known for their disastrous nature which many times led to serious tragedies for humanity. During volcanoes’ eruptions, numerous developing processes in the crust of the earth are taking place. According to Furniss (58),

Several factors are used to assign eruptions a score, including the volume of erupted material, the height of the eruption column, and the duration. The index ranges between zero and eight, with each increase in score representing a ten-fold increase in the various factors. The highest score on the list, VEI8, is reserved for eruptions that emit more than 1,000 cubic kilometers of material.

Below, all the four types of volcanoes will be addressed along with their features and popularities.

Discussing shield volcanoes, it should be said that they are formed as a result of a huge amount of free lava spilling from a vent and coming up abundantly and widely; gradually congealing lava forms a low and wide mountain of dome shape which is called a shield volcano. These types of volcanoes can be very high. Among them are popular volcanoes in Hawaii.

With regards to composite volcanoes, it should be stated that they are formed as a result of the eruption of both lava and tephra which occurs from a central vent. At the end of the erupting process lava and tephra form a cone in the shape of a tower which is called a composite volcano. These volcanoes tend to develop into mountains of beautiful and symmetrical forms. Among the most famous volcanoes of this type are Mount Fuji in Japan and Mount Rainer in Washington (Hegner 88).

Addressing plug domes, it should be stated that they are formed as a result of congealing of very viscous lava (for example, rhyolite one) which is too thick to flow at a remote distance. As a result of this process, the mountain grows from below and from within. This mountain is called a plug dome. The volcanoes of this type are rather young and can be found in numerous parts of the earth including Mono Lake in California.

And finally, speaking about cinder cones, it should be stated that they are formed as a result of tephra’s building up. A cone-shaped mountain that is the result of this process is called a cinder cone volcano. These volcanic mountains are the smallest ones of all types and are generally less in their size than 500 meters. An example of such a volcanic mountain is SP Mountain situated in Arizona, and belonging to the Colorado Plato.

Concluding on all the information related above, it should be stated that there exists a close connection between the structure of any particular volcano and the style of its functioning and its magma and lava nature. Evaluating a row of facts about the functioning of different types of volcanoes, it appears that depending on the process of volcano formation it may be related to one of the four existing volcano types which are known for their different characteristics and “conduct”. In general, volcanoes are subdivided into the following categories: shield volcanoes, composite volcanoes, lava domes or plug domes, and, finally, cinder cones.

Furniss, Charlie. “Volcanoes: They’re the Most Powerful Expressions of Nature’s Might, Responsible for Mass Extinctions, Global Climate Change, and the Demise of Entire Civilisations, but How Much Do We Really Know About Volcanoes? and Just How Close Are We to the Holy Grail of Accurately Predicting When They’re Going to Explode?.” Geographical Mar. 2007: 52+. Questia . Web.

Hegner, E., et al. “Testing Tectonic Models with Geochemical Provenance Parameters in Greywacke.” Journal of the Geological Society (2005): 87+. Questia . Web.

Hess, Darrel. Physical Geography Laboratory Manual (10th ed.), The United States: Prentice-Hall, 2010. Print.

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• The Issue of Age of Earth
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• A Benchmarking Biodiversity Survey of the Inter-Tidal Zone at Goat Island Bay, Leigh Marine Laboratory
• Chicago (A-D)
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IvyPanda. (2022, January 31). Volcanoes and Their Characteristics. https://ivypanda.com/essays/volcanoes-and-their-characteristics/

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Bibliography

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The surface of the Earth is made up of tectonic plates that lie beneath both the land and oceans of our planet. The movements of these plates can build mountains or cause volcanoes to erupt. The clash of these plates can also cause violent earthquakes, where Earth’s surface shakes. Earthquakes are more common in some parts of the world than others, because some places, like California, sit on top of the meeting point, or fault, of two plates. When those plates scrape against each other and cause an earthquake, the results can be deadly and devastating.

Learn more about earthquakes with this curated collection of classroom resources.

Geology, Geography, Physical Geography

Earthquakes and volcanoes

Study and revision resources.

1. Plate Tectonics

Structure of the earth.

The earth consists of 4 main layers:

• The  crust  is the outer layer, broken into sections caled tectonic plates. It is the thinnest layer and the one which we live on.
• The  mantle  is the thickest layer and consists of molten rock
• The  outer core  is molten & about 3000 degrees C.
• This  inner core  is solid due to the immense pressure and is about 5000 degrees C.
• Both the inner & outer core consist of iron & nickle.

Tectonic Plates

Plate Movement

The earths crust is broken into different sections which are slowly moving about.

Convection currents in the mantle distribute the heat from the core. This movement drags the plates in different directions and is responsible for earthquakes and volcanoes.

Over millions of years the land masses that we are familiar with have moved around the planet as the tectonic plates shifted about.

Where the different sections of tectonic plate meet the movement causes geographical features such as mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes.

Constrcutive Boundaries

• Convection currents in the mantle drag the plates apart.
• Magma rises to fill the gap and solidifies to form new crust.
• As the process repeats a ridge is formed and this slowly gets wider as the plates continue to seperate.
• Example: the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
• This creates fissure volcanoes which are long cracks, they are less explosive.

Destructive Boundaries

• Oceanic & continental plates collide. The oceanic plate is denser and so sinks under the continental plate.
• As the oceanic plate sinks it takes some sand, water and other materia from the sea bed with it. This melts and is gaseous which causes it to force its way up to the surface as a volcano.
• The continental plate crumples at the edge creating fold mountains in addition to the volcanoes.

Collision Boundary

• Convection currents in the mantle pull two plates of continental crust together.
• Since both crusts are made of the same material and have equal density neither subducts. They crumple up.
• This process creates fold mountains. There are no volcanoes at these boundaries but earthquakes occur.
• Example: the Himalayas.

2. Volcanoes

Types of Volcano

• Shield : gentle sloping, created by basic lava (travels along way before solidifying). Found at constructive boundaries.
• Composite : alternating layers of acid lava & rock/ash create the classic conical shape. Found at destructive boundaries.
• Ash & cinder : Alternating layers of ash & cinder compacted.
• Fissure : volcanoes running along a crack in the crust, usually a constructive boundary.
• Caldera : Crater volcano created after volcano collapses in on itself having emptied the magma chamber.
• Dome : steep sided volcano created by acid lava which cools before it has travelled far.
• Destructive boundary volcanoes are often cone shaped and explosive.
• Constructive boundary volcanoes are often more gently sloped and have less violent erruptions.

Volcanic Features

Objective: be able to correctly label the key features of volcanoes and relate them to the increased risk they pose to human settlements.

• Volcanoes vary in shape and structure depending on the reason for their existence.
• Secodary vents (fumaroles) occur when magma and gases force their way through weaknesses in the main volcanic structure.
• Lava, ash, cinders and smoke may be ejected from the vent.
• Draw and label a simple diagram of a volcano and the ejected material.
• Make simple sketch diagrams showing fissure, dome and ash-cinder volcanic structures.
• Using Figure 2.0, describe the location of the Pacific Ring of Fire and explain why this area has this name.

Costs & Benefits of Volcanic Environments

Negative Impacts

• Volcanic eruptions can cause significant damage and loss of life.
• Lava flows destroy vegetation buildings and roads.
• Ash can smother plants, cut out light in the atmosphere, disrupt air travel and cause respiration problems for people.
• Eruptions often cause earthquakes as pressure is released.
• Volcanoes with ice near the peak, or crater lakes can cause devastating mud flows as the water mixes with loose ash.
• Gas released from volcanoes can travel down the slopes silently killing people and animals.

Positive Impacts

• Volcanoes can bring environmental and socio-economic benefits.
• Fertile soils: ash and lava contain many minerals and nutrients that weather to form fertile soils which can be used very effectively for farming.
• Sulphur deposits: sulphur is mined and sold by the people living close to volcanoes in Indonesia.
• Tourism: the volcanic scenery, crater lakes, hot spring and geysers attract tourists and create many job opportunities.

Case Study: Montserrat

Objective: be able to describe the main events and damage caused by the volcano. You should be able to suggest reasons for the extent of the damage.

Montserrat is an island in the Caribbean that unexpectedly suffered devastating eruptions.

• Using the google map shown to the right, describe the location of Montserrat on a regional scale.
• Draw a sketch map showing the location of the Sufriere Hills volcano within the island.
• Explain the cause of the volcano
• Describe the main effects/impacts of the eruptions
• Why did they cause so much damage on the island?
• Make a sketch of Figure 2.1 to show the hazard map and restricted zones that are in place on Montserrat since the eruption.

3. Earthquakes

Earthquake Characteristics

• Focus: the exact point at which the earthquake occurred- often deep in the ground.
• Epicentre: the point on the surface of the earth directly above the focus (so it can be located easily on maps).
• Seismic waves: these are the shockwaves that move outwards from the focus. Their energy disipates the further they travel.
• Seismometer: instrument that measures the magnitude of earthquakes.

Risk factors and Earthquakes

Objective: Demonstrate an ability to to identify factors that can affect the scale of a disaster and be able to link them to levels of development.

• Watch Video 2.1.2
• Describe why older building tend to suffer more damage in earthquakes than newer ones.
• Why do buildings built on soft land suffer more than those with foundations on rock?
• Why can hospitals outside towns add to the problems?

Measuring Earthquakes

• Seismometer: a machine that records vibrations in the earth.
• Seismograph : the print out/graph produced by the seismometer.
• Richter scale : the sale traditionally used to record the magnitude of an earthquake.
• Movement Magnitude Scale: the scale often used currently to record the magnitude of earthquakes (it is more accurate for large earthquakes than the Richter scale.

Case Study: Haiti

Cause & Effect of the Haiti Earthquake

Objectives:

• Understand the cause of the Haiti earthquake.
• Demonstrate an ability to interpret information shown in photographs.
• Demonstrate analytic and reasoning skills in relation to development and disaster impacts.
• Describe the location and cause of the earthquake.
• Go to this page BBC bitesize. Describe the key facts about the damage it caused.

Responses to the Earthquake

• Watch Videos 2.1.3 and 2.1.4
• Go to these links Guardian: Haiti 2015 and Haiti then & now .
• How well has Haiti recovered from the earthquake?
• Describe three reasons why there are still lots of problems in Haiti 5 years on from the earthquake.

Extended Writing Task

Explain why the less developed a country is the more it is likely to suffer if an earthquake occurs. (you should write about a page in your book to answer this. Factors to include: preparation, emergency response, rebuilding/reconstruction.

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Academic literature on the topic 'Volcanoes and earthquakes'

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Journal articles on the topic "Volcanoes and earthquakes":

Seniukov, S., and I. Nuzhdina. "VOLCANOES of KAMCHATKA." Zemletriaseniia Severnoi Evrazii [Earthquakes in Northern Eurasia] , no. 22 (November 12, 2019): 485–501. http://dx.doi.org/10.35540/1818-6254.2019.22.43.

Seniukov, S., and I. Nuzhdina. "VOLCANOES OF KAMCHATKA." Earthquakes in Northern Eurasia , no. 23 (December 15, 2020): 375–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.35540/1818-6254.2020.23.38.

Bagirov, E., R. Nadirov, and I. Lerche. "Earthquakes, Mud Volcano Eruptions, and Fracture Formation Hazards in the South Caspian Basin: Statistical Inferences from the Historical Record." Energy Exploration & Exploitation 14, no. 6 (December 1996): 585–606. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/014459879601400604.

Kugaenko, Yu A., V. A. Saltykov, I. Yu Koulakov, V. M. Pavlov, P. V. Voropaev, I. F. Abkadyrov, and V. P. Komzeleva. "An Awakening Magmatic System beneath the Udina Volcanic Complex (Kamchatka): Evidence from Seismic Unrest of 2017–2019." Russian Geology and Geophysics 62, no. 2 (February 1, 2021): 223–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.2113/rgg20194098.

Inoue, Hiroshi, Renato U. Solidum, and Jr. "Special Issue on Enhancement of Earthquake and Volcano Monitoring and Effective Utilization of Disaster Mitigation Information in the Philippines." Journal of Disaster Research 10, no. 1 (February 1, 2015): 5–7. http://dx.doi.org/10.20965/jdr.2015.p0005.

Takada, Youichiro, and Yo Fukushima. "Volcanic Subsidence Triggered by Megathrust Earthquakes." Journal of Disaster Research 9, no. 3 (June 1, 2014): 373–80. http://dx.doi.org/10.20965/jdr.2014.p0373.

Kasahara, J. "GEOPHYSICS: Tides, Earthquakes, and Volcanoes." Science 297, no. 5580 (July 19, 2002): 348–49. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1074601.

Brodsky, E. E., B. Sturtevant, and H. Kanamori. "Earthquakes, volcanoes, and rectified diffusion." Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth 103, B10 (October 10, 1998): 23827–38. http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/98jb02130.

Iguchi, Masato, Surono, Takeshi Nishimura, Muhamad Hendrasto, Umar Rosadi, Takahiro Ohkura, Hetty Triastuty, et al. "Methods for Eruption Prediction and Hazard Evaluation at Indonesian Volcanoes." Journal of Disaster Research 7, no. 1 (January 1, 2012): 26–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.20965/jdr.2012.p0026.

Slattery, William. "Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and the Information Superhighway." Science Activities: Classroom Projects and Curriculum Ideas 33, no. 3 (September 1996): 8–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00368121.1996.10113226.

Dissertations / Theses on the topic "Volcanoes and earthquakes":

Roberts, Nick Stuart. "Earthquake distributions at volcanoes : models and field observations." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1842/23653.

Hill-Butler, C. "Evaluating the effect of large magnitude earthquakes on thermal volcanic activity : a comparative assessment of the parameters and mechanisms that trigger volcanic unrest and eruptions." Thesis, Coventry University, 2015. http://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/items/5f612a7d-ebbf-4d38-90aa-89c4984a1c0f/1.

Woods, Jennifer. "Dyke-induced earthquakes during the 2014-15 Bárðarbunga-Holuhraun rifting event, Iceland." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2019. https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/289448.

Fuchs, Florian [Verfasser]. "Dynamic triggering: The effects of remote earthquakes on volcanoes, hydrothermal systems and tectonics / Florian Fuchs." Bonn : Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Bonn, 2015. http://d-nb.info/1077289243/34.

Loureiro, Miguel. "Of the earthquake and other stories : the continuity of change in Pakistan-administered Kashmir." Thesis, University of Sussex, 2012. http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/id/eprint/43284/.

Feng, Lujia. "Investigations of volcanic and earthquake-related deformation: observations and models from Long Valley Caldera, Northwestern Peloponnese, and Northwestern Costa Rica." Diss., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/1853/41220.

Ratdomopurbo, Antonius. "Étude sismologique du volcan Merapi et formation du dome de 1994." Grenoble 1, 1995. http://www.theses.fr/1995GRE10064.

Hidayati, Sri. "Study on volcano-tectonic earthquakes at Sakurajima volcano and its surroundings." 京都大学 (Kyoto University), 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2433/136776.

Bracamontes, Dulce Maria Vargas. "Stress models related to volcano-tectonic earthquakes." Thesis, University of Leeds, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.540585.

Jeddi, Zeinab. "Seismological Investigation of Katla Volcanic System (Iceland) : 3D Velocity Structure and Overall Seismicity Pattern." Doctoral thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för geovetenskaper, 2016. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-303342.

Books on the topic "Volcanoes and earthquakes":

Knight, Linsay. Volcanoes & earthquakes . Edited by Moores Eldridge M. 1938-, Beckett Andrew, and National Geographic Society (U.S.). [Alexandria, Va.]: Time-Life Books, 1996.

Rubin, Ken. Volcanoes & earthquakes . Dorking: Templar, 2008.

Knight, Linsay. Volcanoes & earthquakes . Edited by Moores Eldridge M. 1938-. Hemel Hempstead: Macdonald Young Books, 1995.

Vrbova, Zuza. Volcanoes & earthquakes . Mahwah, N.J: Troll Associates, 1990.

Kerrod, Robin. Volcanoes & earthquakes . London: Hermes House, 2000.

Oxlade, Chris. Earthquakes & volcanoes . London: Franklin Watts, 2006.

Stidworthy, John. Earthquakes & volcanoes . San Diego, CA: Thunder Bay Press, 1996.

Lauber, Patricia. Volcanoes and earthquakes . New York: Scholastic, 1985.

Booth, Basil. Earthquakes and volcanoes . London: Cloverleaf, 1992.

Jennings, Terry J. Volcanoes and earthquakes . Parsippany, N.J: Silver Burdett Press, 1998.

Book chapters on the topic "Volcanoes and earthquakes":

Wang, Chi-Yuen, and Michael Manga. "Mud Volcanoes." In Lecture Notes in Earth System Sciences , 323–42. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64308-9_12.

Wang, Chi-Yuen, and Michael Manga. "Mud Volcanoes." In Earthquakes and Water , 33–43. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00810-8_3.

Polet, J., and H. Kanamori. "Tsunami Earthquakes." In Complexity in Tsunamis, Volcanoes, and their Hazards , 3–23. New York, NY: Springer US, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1705-2_567.

Wright, J. B. "Introduction: earthquakes, volcanoes and meteorites." In Geology and Mineral Resources of West Africa , 151–53. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 1985. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-3932-6_17.

Donovan, Amy. "Earthquakes and Volcanoes: Risk from Geophysical Hazards." In Handbook of Risk Theory , 341–71. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1433-5_14.

Wang, Kelin, Yan Hu, and Jiangheng He. "Wedge Mechanics: Relation with Subduction Zone Earthquakes and Tsunamis." In Complexity in Tsunamis, Volcanoes, and their Hazards , 55–69. New York, NY: Springer US, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-1705-2_590.

Prost, Gary L., and Benjamin P. Prost. "Acts of God? Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Other Natural Disasters." In The Geology Companion , 257–314. Boca Raton : CRC Press, 2017.: CRC Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1201/9781315152929-12.

Lee, William H. K. "Complexity in Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Volcanoes, and Forecast, Introduction to." In Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science , 1213–24. New York, NY: Springer New York, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30440-3_80.

Lee, William H. K. "Complexity in Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Volcanoes, and Forecast, Introduction to." In Extreme Environmental Events , 68–78. New York, NY: Springer New York, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7695-6_7.

Siegel, Frederic R. "Damping the Dangers from Tectonics-Driven (Natural) Hazards: Earthquakes and Volcanoes." In Mitigation of Dangers from Natural and Anthropogenic Hazards , 19–20. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38875-5_6.

Conference papers on the topic "Volcanoes and earthquakes":

Yousuke Miyagi, Masanobu Shimada, Takeo Tadono, Osamu Isoguchi, and Masato Ohki. "ALOS emergency observations by JAXA for monitoring earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in 2008." In 2008 Second Workshop on Use of Remote Sensing Techniques for Monitoring Volcanoes and Seismogenic Areas (USEReST) . IEEE, 2008. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/userest.2008.4740357.

Losik, Len. "Using Satellites to Predict Earthquakes, Volcano Eruptions, Identify and Track Tsunamis." In AIAA SPACE 2012 Conference & Exposition . Reston, Virigina: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.2514/6.2012-5176.

Almasi, Amin. "Gravity measurement from moving platform by Kalman Filter and position and velocity corrections for earth layer monitoring to earthquake and volcano activity survey." In 2008 Second Workshop on Use of Remote Sensing Techniques for Monitoring Volcanoes and Seismogenic Areas (USEReST) . IEEE, 2008. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/userest.2008.4740355.

Firmansyah, Rizky, Andri Dian Nugraha, and Kristianto. "Micro-earthquake signal analysis and hypocenter determination around Lokon volcano complex." In NATIONAL PHYSICS CONFERENCE 2014 (PERFIK 2014) . AIP Publishing LLC, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4915048.

Losik, L. "Using satellites to predict earthquakes, volcano eruptions, identify and track tsunamis from space." In 2012 IEEE Aerospace Conference . IEEE, 2012. http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/aero.2012.6187030.

Siregar, Azhar Fuadi, Irwan Meilano, Dina Anggreni Sarsito, and Estu Kriswati. "Correlation between seismic activity and volcano deformation on Sinabung Volcano in February 2017." In INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON EARTH HAZARD AND DISASTER MITIGATION (ISEDM) 2017: The 7th Annual Symposium on Earthquake and Related Geohazard Research for Disaster Risk Reduction . Author(s), 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.5047375.

Harlianti, Ulvienin, Andri Dian Nugraha, and Novianti Indrastuti. "Relocation of volcano-tectonic earthquake hypocenter at Mt. Sinabung using double difference method." In INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON EARTH HAZARD AND DISASTER MITIGATION (ISEDM) 2016: The 6th Annual Symposium on Earthquake and Related Geohazard Research for Disaster Risk Reduction . Author(s), 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4987092.

Santoso, Nono Agus, Rahmat Fajri, and Satria Bijaksana. "Identifying volcanic ash through magnetic parameters: Case studies of Mount Sinabung and other volcanoes." In INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON EARTH HAZARD AND DISASTER MITIGATION (ISEDM) 2017: The 7th Annual Symposium on Earthquake and Related Geohazard Research for Disaster Risk Reduction . Author(s), 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.5047324.

Ry, Rexha V., A. Priyono, A. D. Nugraha, and A. Basuki. "Seismicity study of volcano-tectonic in and around Tangkuban Parahu active volcano in West Java region, Indonesia." In THE 5TH INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON EARTHHAZARD AND DISASTER MITIGATION: The Annual Symposium on Earthquake and Related Geohazard Research for Disaster Risk Reduction . Author(s), 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4947372.

Fathurrohmah, Septiana, and Ayu Candra Kurniati. "Disaster vulnerability assessment of Merapi Volcano eruption." In INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON EARTH HAZARD AND DISASTER MITIGATION (ISEDM) 2017: The 7th Annual Symposium on Earthquake and Related Geohazard Research for Disaster Risk Reduction . Author(s), 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.5047291.

Reports on the topic "Volcanoes and earthquakes":

Syracuse, Ellen Marie. 2005 and 2008 earthquake relocations at Akutan Volcano . Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI), November 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.2172/1226895.

Earthquakes & Volcanoes, Volume 23, Number 6, 1992 . US Geological Survey, 1993. http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/70039050.

This dynamic planet: World map of volcanoes, earthquakes, impact craters and plate tectonics . US Geological Survey, 2006. http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/i2800.

Earthquakes & Volcanoes, Volume 21, Number 1, 1989: Featuring the U.S. Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado, USA . US Geological Survey, 1989. http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/70039068.

Publications of the Branch of Engineering Seismology and Geology, Office of Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Engineering: January 1980 through December 1985 . US Geological Survey, 1985. http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/1666.

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21 May 2024

Highly sensitive fiber optic gyroscope senses rotational ground motion around active volcano

By revealing Earth’s hidden rotational dynamics, new sensor could help enhance risk assessment and early warning systems in seismic hotspots

Caption:  Researchers built a prototype fiber optic gyroscope (pictured) for high resolution, real-time monitoring of ground rotations caused by earthquakes in an active volcanic area. The fibers are precisely wound around an aluminum spool to form a gyroscope based on the Sagnac effect.

Credit:  Saverio Avino, CNR-INO

WASHINGTON — Researchers have built a prototype fiber optic gyroscope for high resolution, real-time monitoring of ground rotations caused by earthquakes in the active volcanic area of Campi Flegrei in Naples, Italy. A better understanding of the seismic activity in this highly populated area could improve risk assessment and might lead to improved early warning systems.

“When seismic activity occurs, the Earth’s surface experiences both linear and rotational movements,” said research team leader Saverio Avino from the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Istituto Nazionale di Ottica (CNR-INO) in Italy. “Although rotations are generally very small and not usually monitored, the ability to capture them would provide a more complete understanding of the Earth’s internal dynamics and seismic sources.”

In Optica Publishing Group journal  Applied Optics , the researchers report preliminary observational data from the rotational sensor, which is based on a 2-km long fiber-optic gyroscope. The sensor performed well while continuously recording data over five months and was able to detect noise and ground rotations from small to medium local earthquakes.

The metropolitan city of Naples has a population of around 3 million people and three active volcanoes. The entire area is covered by a grid of multiparametric sensors that provide real-time monitoring of various physical and chemical parameters used to study seismic and volcanic activity.

“The measurement of ground rotations will add another tile to this complex mosaic of sensors,” said research team member Danilo Galuzzo from the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology (INGV). “This additional information will also aid in the comprehensive understanding of volcanic earthquake signals, which are crucial for detecting any changes in the dynamics of volcanoes.”

Measuring rotational movement

Gyroscopes are devices used to detect and measure changes in orientation or angular velocity – the rate at which an object rotates. For example, in smartphones simple gyroscopes detect and measure the device's orientation and rotation. To measure rotation in seismic waves from an earthquake or volcanic activity, the researchers developed a more complex gyroscope based on the Sagnac effect.

Caption:  The fiber optic gyroscope captured small to medium earthquakes, including this swarm of earthquakes, in the volcanic area of Campi Flegrei in Naples, Italy.

The Sagnac effect occurs when light traveling in opposite directions around a closed loop exhibits different travel times. This leads to measurable interference patterns in the light that depend on the rotation rate of the loop. By measuring the light interference, the angular velocity can be detected with high resolution.

 “Our labs are located in the heart of an active volcanic area, thus creating a natural source of earthquakes,” said Avino. “Because we experience small/medium earthquakes almost every day, we can measure and acquire a large number of data on ground rotations, which can be successively analyzed to study seismic and volcanic phenomena of the Campi Flegrei region.” 

Capturing seismic activity

Caption:  Map of the Campi Flegrei volcanic area with seismic stations of the monitoring network (blue triangles) and the fiber-optic gyroscope (orange circle) and some recorded seismic events (red circles).

The researchers assembled a prototype fiber-optic rotational sensor using standard laboratory instrumentation and components. To test it, they injected light into a 2-kilometer-long optical fiber cable, similar to the ones used for optical telecommunication. The fiber cable formed a loop where the input and output are connected, creating a continuous light path with no breaks, and was precisely wound around an aluminum spool with a diameter of 25 cm to form a coil.

During the experiments, the optical sensor is kept in a controlled laboratory environment in a building that sits on top of a volcano caldera – a large depression formed when a volcano erupts and collapses.  “This first version of the system showed a resolution comparable to other state-of-the art fiber-optic gyroscopes,” said the paper’s first author Marialuisa Capezzuto, who is from CNR-INO and worked on the experimental apparatus. “It also had a very good duty cycle—the time percentage the instrument is measuring/acquiring data —which allowed us to run the system continuously for around five months.”

“The prototype gyroscope can only measure one of the three directional components of the rotation movement. However, combining three of the same gyroscopes, each oriented to capture a different axis of rotation, could be used to capture all three components,” said Luigi Santamaria Amato from the Italian Space Agency (ASI).  Once the researchers have improved the resolution and stability of the single-axis system, they plan to set up a three-axis gyroscope. Eventually, they want to create a permanent ground rotation observatory in the Campi Flegrei area.

Caption:  The Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche labs are pictured at the foot of the Monte Gauro quiescent volcano.

Paper: M. Capezzuto, G. Gaudiosi, L. Nardone, E. D’Alema, D. D’Ambrosio, R. Manzo, A. Giorgini, P. Malara, P. De Natale, G. Gagliardi, L. Santamaria Amato, D. Galluzzo, S. Avino, “A fiber-optic gyroscope for rotational seismic ground motion monitoring of the Campi Flegrei volcanic area,” Applied Optics , (2024).

DOI: doi.org/10.1364/AO.518354

About Optica Publishing Group

Optica Publishing Group is a division of the society, Optica , Advancing Optics and Photonics Worldwide. It publishes the largest collection of peer-reviewed and most-cited content in optics and photonics, including 18 prestigious journals, the society’s flagship member magazine, and papers and videos from more than 835 conferences. With over 400,000 journal articles, conference papers and videos to search, discover and access, our publications portfolio represents the full range of research in the field from around the globe.

About Applied Optics

Applied Optics publishes in-depth peer-reviewed content about applications-centered research in optics. These articles cover research in optical technology, photonics, lasers, information processing, sensing, and environmental optics. Optica Publishing Group publishes Applied Optics three times per month and oversees Editor-in-Chief Gisele Bennett, MEPSS LLC. For more information, visit  Applied Optics .

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May 21, 2024

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

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'Dusty' archives inspire new story about 1886 Charleston earthquake

by University of Colorado at Boulder

Late on August 31, 1886, while many people were asleep, a large quake rocked Charleston, South Carolina, and the surrounding region, toppling buildings, buckling railroad tracks, and causing sand to "boil" or bubble from liquefaction. By the time the shaking stopped, approximately 2,000 structures were damaged and at least 60 people had lost their lives.

The 1886 Charleston earthquake was one of the most powerful earthquakes to strike the eastern United States, with shaking felt as far away as Boston, Chicago, and New Orleans. From 1670 when Europeans first settled in Charleston until that time, the region experienced only occasional minor seismic activity.

As aftershocks rattled the region, geologists and engineers raced into the field, recording detailed notes and taking photographs of the damage. Their observations captured ground disturbances in impressive detail, but scientists didn't yet fully understand the relationship between earthquakes and faults, so they weren't able to piece together the complete story.

"The timing of the Charleston Earthquake was unique," said Susan Hough, a seismologist at the United States Geological Survey (USGS). "If it had happened 75 years earlier, we would have had fewer scientists trained and able to spring into action. If it had happened ten years later, seismograms probably would have recorded the shaking."

Over a century after the quake, Hough and CIRES Fellow Roger Bilham, a research scientist at CU Boulder, picked up the trail, building on the original records and more recent attempts to piece together the story of the deadly quake.

"Although a dozen possible faults had been identified beneath the swamps surrounding Charleston, the actual fault that ruptured in the earthquake remained a mystery," Bilham said.

The team's search through historical documents prompted exciting new discoveries about the Charleston earthquake—from the fault that may be responsible to the magnitude and deformation on the ground.

Their work, published in a series of four papers in 2023 and 2024, provides an example of how scientists can use historical documents to peel back the layers of other geologic mysteries. And in the interior of continental plates, where seismic activity is less frequent, the work may help communities better assess their risk for future earthquakes.

Field evidence reveals faulting

Hough and Bilham started their investigation of the Charleston earthquake by digging deep into the written accounts of the event, including those by Earle Sloan, a mining engineer who took meticulous notes and measurements of the damage to three railroads radiating from Charleston. They suspected that buried within Sloan's notes were clues that could help them identify the fault responsible for the earthquake.

But there were a few hurdles they had to get over first.

"Converting the numbers into a convincing story turned out to be a nightmare," Bilham explained. "The 1886 notes inadvertently included entry errors and typos that shifted the positions of buckles indiscriminately hither and thither."

In 2022, the team traveled to Charleston in hopes of unscrambling the muddle. They zeroed in on a section of the railroad track in Summerville where severe track disturbances had been reported in 1886. Bilham suggested they use GPS methods to establish the locations of observations, which Sloan had tallied using railroad mileposts.

Much to their surprise, the scientists identified a 4.5-meter (14.8-foot) offset to the right in what should be a straight-line mile of track. At first, the scientists couldn't believe the size of the offset, but upon a closer reading of Sloan's notes, they discovered that he too had described an offset at the same location. The offset likely meant a fault beneath the tracks had moved. Modern geologists had identified the Summerville fault in that location, but nobody had linked it to the 1886 earthquake.

"It was a moment of serendipity that opened up a whole new dimension to the project," Hough said.

When they looked at historical maps of the area, Bilham and Hough also found that Summerville appeared to have risen 1 meter (3.3 feet) after the earthquake, whereas the docks at nearby Fort Dorchester had remained undisturbed since their construction in the 17th century. The findings confirmed that something momentous had occurred near Summerville in 1886.

A new model to identify the culprit

To identify the fault responsible for the 1886 Charleston earthquake, the scientists built a mathematical rupture model for movement on the Summerville fault that could explain both the archaeological and geological evidence, including the right offset in the railroad tracks and the uplift in Summerville.

Bilham and Hough found that movement along a west-dipping Summerville fault could explain why the town is situated higher than the surrounding swamps. The model pointed to a 7.3 magnitude, which is consistent with the large "felt" area of the earthquake and previous estimates. They published their results in The Seismic Record in 2023.

"It turns out you can put the pieces together to identify the fault that caused the earthquake and come up with a detailed model for how the fault broke," Hough said. "It was the first time anyone had done that for the Charleston earthquake."

After identifying the potential culprit, Hough and Bilham then shifted their attention back to the impacts on the ground. Using the fault location, they simulated what shaking might have been like at different locations and compared the results to observations from the old records. The comparison, which was published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America in January 2024, supports their proposed 7.3 magnitude.

Deformed tracks preserve seismic waves

Bilham continued to dig into the historical documents to sort out why railroad tracks 20 miles from Summerville had been buckled and torn apart.

"It was a monumental undertaking," Hough said. "It was like Sloan had passed the torch across the ages to Roger."

An old photograph, taken the day after the Charleston earthquake, showed what appeared to be an offset of railroad track where it crossed a low-lying swamp. Many scientists used the photo to infer faulting in the area.

The scientists constructed a virtual 3D view of the deformed railroad tracking using precise measurements of a thousand points in the original photo, which had survived in the archives of the Charleston Museum. The work led to another stunning realization—the buckled tracks around Charleston had collectively recorded the contraction and compression of seismic waves racing from the epicenter of the earthquake.

"We were able to show that buckles occurred everywhere that the line had been compressed more than permitted by its expansion joints, and that the line had parted where the expansion bolts had broken," Bilham said.

The work was also published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America .

The bigger picture

Hough and Bilham's efforts show that even after 137 years, scientists can still learn new things about the Charleston earthquake and contribute to the broader understanding of seismic activity in the region.

"Charleston is a brick in the wall," Hough said. "Now, we understand one event in one location, but there's lots of work yet to be done to piece together the larger picture."

Intraplate earthquakes like the one in Charleston differ from their counterparts, which occur where large pieces of Earth's crust rub against each other. There is no single pattern to explain why they occur, and often, each event requires a unique investigation. But Hough hopes their work will inspire scientists to look deeper—into the past and the future.

"There is a tendency to assume all knowledge is on the internet and readily available," Hough said. "Our efforts confirm how much value there can be in considering the dusty original sources of data."

Susan E. Hough et al, The 1886 Charleston, South Carolina, Earthquake: Intensities and Ground Motions, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (2024). DOI: 10.1785/0120230224

Roger Bilham et al, The 1886 Charleston, South Carolina, Earthquake: Relic Railroad Offset Reveals Rupture, The Seismic Record (2023). DOI: 10.1785/0320230022

Journal information: Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America

Provided by University of Colorado at Boulder

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What We Know About the Ambani Wedding

Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant’s pre-wedding in March caused a stir when photos and videos of their lavish celebration circulated on social media. Here’s what we know about their July nuptials.

By Sadiba Hasan

Even in a country known for grandiose weddings, Anant Ambani, the son of India’s richest man, and Radhika Merchant’s three-day pre-wedding celebration earlier this year in India stood out.

Within hours into the opulent event — where Rihanna performed, and Mark Zuckerberg and Ivanka Trump wore sherwanis and saris — photographs and videos began to flood social media. The display of money, power and wealth from India’s most influential business family captured the attention of critics and onlookers around the world .

On March 1, more than 1,000 members of the international elite flew to Jamnagar, a city in the western Indian state of Gujarat, for the weekend festivities. Guests, which included billionaires and Bollywood superstars, were offered services like chartered flights, makeup artists, top chefs and luxurious vehicles for pickup and drop-off. A glass palace was built for the occasion, and there was a light show consisting of more than 5,000 drones.

There is speculation that the couple plan to host a second pre-wedding celebration on a cruise ship later this month.

The couple’s wedding will take place in July, but their team has kept under wraps the specifics of what will be one of the most lavish weddings of the season. Here’s what we know so far.

Anant Ambani is a son of Mukesh Ambani , the chairman of the megacompany Reliance Industries who Forbes estimates is worth $115 billion , and Nita Ambani.

Mr. Ambani, 29, runs the energy business at Reliance Industries, based in Mumbai, India. He has two older twin siblings, both of whom are also on the board of Reliance Industries. He graduated from Brown and is passionate about animal welfare and rehabilitation. The pre-wedding ceremony included a tour of Vantara, Mr. Ambani’s animal sanctuary in Jamnagar. “This was my giving back to society,” he said in a speech during the festivities.

Radhika Merchant is a daughter of Viren and Shaila Merchant. Mr. Merchant is the chief executive and vice chairman of Encore Healthcare, also headquartered in Mumbai.

Ms. Merchant, 29, is a director at her family’s health care company. She graduated from N.Y.U. and is trained in Indian classical dance.

The Love Story

Ms. Merchant told Vogue that she and Mr. Ambani met through mutual friends during a drive in 2017. “That first meeting just sparked something special between us, and it wasn’t long before we started dating,” she said.

In 2023, Mr. Ambani proposed to Ms. Merchant at the Shrinathji Temple in the northwestern Indian state of Rajasthan.

“I am 100 percent the lucky one, there is no doubt about that,” Mr. Ambani said in a speech during the pre-wedding weekend. “It feels like I met Radhika yesterday, but every day, I fall more and more in love. Like my brother-in-law says, when he used to see my sister, he had volcanoes and fountains going up in his heart. I would say I have earthquakes and tsunamis going on in my heart when I see Radhika.”

The Wedding Date

The wedding is set to take place July 10 to 12. The dates were determined by the Hindu tradition of getting married on an auspicious date based on the couples’ birth charts.

Indian weddings typically include several events, including a haldi, a ceremony that involves applying turmeric paste on the bride and groom’s body; a mehndi, a henna ritual; a sangeet, a night of music and dancing; and a wedding ceremony followed by a reception.

The Location

The wedding festivities will occur in Mumbai, where the couple live. Events will be split between the Ambani family home, called Antilia , and the Jio World Convention Centre, a popular venue in Mumbai for weddings. Receptions will be at the larger venue, whereas intimate ceremonies will take place in their home.

The Pre-Wedding

Bill Gates; Mark Zuckerberg; present and former prime ministers of Canada, Sweden, and Qatar; the king and queen of Bhutan; and Bollywood’s biggest stars, like Deepika Padukone, Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan, all attended the pre-wedding celebration in early March.

There was plenty of entertainment, including a performance by Rihanna on the first night. Diljit Dosanjh, the first Punjabi singer to perform at Coachella, took the stage on the second night. And to close out the weekend, Akon performed.

The celebration was a fashion spectacle, with custom looks from Versace, Dolce & Gabbana and Manish Malhotra. A 10-page dress code, which included a “jungle fever” theme for a visit to the animal sanctuary, was sent to guests in advance.

Mr. Ambani’s two older siblings also had lavish pre-wedding festivities. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry were among the attendees at Isha Ambani’s pre-wedding in 2018, which featured a performance by Beyoncé . A year later, Akash Ambani’s pre-wedding bash featured a performance by Coldplay .

Given the extravagance of Ms. Merchant and Mr. Ambani’s pre-wedding celebration, we expect lots of opulence for the couple’s wedding in July. This article will continue to be updated as more information is released.

Suhasini Raj contributed reporting.

Sadiba Hasan reports on love and culture for the Styles section of The Times. More about Sadiba Hasan

Weddings Trends and Ideas

Keeping Friendships Intact: The soon-to-be-married couple and their closest friends might experience stress and even tension leading up to their nuptials. Here’s how to avoid a friendship breakup .

‘Edible Haute Couture’: Bastien Blanc-Tailleur, a luxury cake designer based in Paris, creates opulent confections for high-profile clients , including European royalty and American socialites.

Reinventing a Mexican Tradition: Mariachi, a soundtrack for celebration in Mexico, offers a way for couples to honor their heritage  at their weddings.

Something Thrifted: Focused on recycled clothing , some brides are finding their wedding attire on vintage sites and at resale stores.

Brand Your Love Story: Some couples are going above and beyond to personalize their weddings, with bespoke party favors and custom experiences for guests .

Going to Great Lengths : Mega wedding cakes are momentous for reasons beyond their size — they are part of an emerging trend of extremely long cakes .