Sorry about the sparseness of posts this week. It is a combination of a relatively quiet time for volcanic eruptions right now and the start of the new semester here at Denison. I'm going to try to put together a Vulcan's View for tomorrow as there have been a pile of great satellite images lately, but today I thought I'd have a few words about some news and views.
Costa Rica: We haven't talked much about Turrialba lately, but the volcano was placed back on alert today after a new emission of ash and steam, along with an increase in seismicity. The eruption itself looks to have only last 20 minutes, but little else will be known until OVSICORI (the Costa Rican monitoring agency) can do a fly-over of the summit region. You can see some video of Turrialba's new activity here. Indonesia: I was pointed to this, ahem, overblown headline in the Jakarta Globe out of Indonesia the other day: "25 Volcanoes Showing Abnormal Activity: Presidential Aide". Now, at first glance, the casual observer might think this is a bad thing. However, this means that 25 volcanoes of the hundreds in Indonesia are on some level of alert. Ask yourself: Since when is it "abnormal" for active volcanoes to show some signs of activity? We're talking maybe slight upticks in earthquakes, maybe some more steam emissions, something like that. It is not "abnormal" for volcanoes to do this! Only humans think it is "normal" for an active volcano to be perfectly quiet and still. Likely this assessment just shows how much better the monitoring in Indonesia has become where they can actually notice these levels of rumbling at so many different volcanoes. Oregon: Now, I don't want to repeat what I've read in many places, but there has been a lot of chatter about the plan to pump water into drill holes on Newberry Caldera in Oregon. There was a large variation in the level of the news coverage, so of it being very "matter of fact" and some of it being "ZOMG! OH NOES! DOOM!" Different companies have tried to use Newberry for geothermal energy for years, but now new methods of fracturing the rocks to increase permeability (to allow more water to flow through and heat up) have made the potential for geothermal at Newberry a little higher. Anyway, I see this a few ways: (1) Any drilling that happens will likely NOT cause any sort of eruption or renewed activity at Newberry; (2) pumping water may cause increased small earthquakes, but again, not likely to "destabilize" the volcano and cause and eruption; (3) if it works, it could be a boon for geothermal energy. I'm a little skeptical of how practical this might be at volcanoes other than Newberry where the eruptions, at least today, are few (last eruption was ~1,300 years ago - so Newberry is still an active volcano, but not anything like Hood or Saint Helens). However, I will be very interested to see how the drilling operation works out and hopefully the media will follow this project as it continues. Image: Turriabla in January 2012, image courtesy of @VolcanesCR
