A whole bunch of tidbits of a volcanic nature for Tuesday, March 6. Hawai'i: The Royal Gardens subdivision, built in what became an active lava field, saw its last resident forced to leave and his home destroyed by the advancing lava flows on Kilauea. Longtime resident Larry Thompson saw his house inundated by lava over the weekend - he had resisted leaving Royal Gardens for almost 30 years and two homes. The ABC News has some video of Thompson talking about the lava (with some smoldering lava on the road surface behind him). Activity at Kilauea has declined over the last few weeks with little action at the Halema'uma'u and Pu'u O'o craters Ecuador: The weekend saw some new explosive eruptions at Tungurahua with multiple explosions have been registered at the volcano over the last few days. Seismicity has also increased at the Ecuadoran volcano. This activity has been covering much of the region around Tungurahua with ash - not surprisingly causing problems with crops and respiratory health for residents. Indonesia: Marapi in Indonesia continues to make noise according to reports coming out of Indonesia. Suparmo from the Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Agency said that although the volcano has experienced a number of explosions this week, the overall trend is less vigorous activity, thus the volcano remains at alert level II. Ash was reported falling as far as 10 km from the volcano and a 3-km exclusion zone is still being maintained around Marapi. Vanuatu: New Zealand and Vanuatu are collaborating to improve volcano monitoring in Vanuatu. The New Zealand Aid Programme will fund NZ$500,000 worth of seismic monitoring and real-time cameras on Gaua, Aoba (Ambae) and Yasur (Tanna) that will send data to the Vanuatu Meteorology and Geohazards Department (VMGD) in Port Vila. Members of the New Zealand GNS Science will train scientists from Vanuatu on volcano monitoring as well. Alaska: The Alaska Volcano Observatory lowered the alert status at Kanaga from Yellow to Green over the weekend after potential eruption precursor activity waned. After the brief eruption on February 18 and a period of heightened seismicity, the volcano returned to background levels of activity since February 24. Cleveland volcano remains on Orange alert level with continued dome growth at the summit, although little change has been noted in recent satellite images of the volcano's summit. Also, the Alaska Dispatch had one of the first articles I've seen marking the upcoming 100th anniversary of the Novarupta/Valley of 10,000 Smokes eruption. I'm sure we'll see more of this was the June 6 anniversary approaches. Mars: Some recent research looking into features on the Martian surface suggest that a large landslide might have been triggered by geologically recent volcanic activity. According to the study by Rogers et al. (2011) in JGR, the boulders at Cerberus Fossae may have been loosed by "active faulting associated with dike emplacement that is subradial to the Elysium Mons volcano". That would suggest it isn't truly volcanism that might be triggering melting of subsurface ice to allow for the boulders to move but rather intrusions of magma to heat the surrounding ground.
Image: Gaua in Vanuatu / NASA Earth Observatory.
