Subduction

Haiti got struck by a devastating magnitude 7.0 magnitude earthquake on January 14, 2010 around 4:53pm. Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince which is shown in Figure1, which is about 15 miles from the earthquakes epicenter suffered widespread devastation (history.com). After the earthquake there were 59 aftershocks that were reported to be part of the initial earthquake. The aftershocks were just as devastating as the earthquake itself, ranging anywhere from a 4.2 to 5.9 magnitude in strength.…

Ash and Pumice, the Story of Pompeii Angela R. Davis Fresno Pacific University PHYS-151-XON10 Geology and Planet Earth September 24, 2015 Ash and Pumice, the Story of Pompeii Pompeii is a city arrested by time; it is beautifully situated on the Italian seaside with the Somma-Vesuvio complex dominating the skyline. Its ancient narrative is told in ash, pumice, and petrified masks of humanity. Mount Vesuvius is well known for its violent past as attested by the hundreds of…

eighty-five miles of highway. Mount Saint Helens had been dormant for the past one hundred twenty-three years. The volcano was also a strato-volcano. The volcano is part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc. A volcanic arc is a chain of volcanos formed over a subduction plate. The Cascade Volcanic Arc is a major range of volcanoes stretching all the way from British,…

in fact, is located on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which is exactly that type of divergent plate boundary. This is the beginning of the rock cycle where brand new rocks on the Earth’s surface form to replace other rocks that are lost because of the subduction of sinking plates at convergent boundaries, as also described in the “Nutshell” article. What is unique about the process as it appears in McPhee’s story is the speed and violence with which the changes happen. McPhee describes how the fishing…

collapsed over time. Mount Vesuvius is located on Italy’s west coast and overlooks the Bay and city of Naples. Vesuvius stands about 4000 ft above sea level, and is part of the Companian volcanic arc, which is a line of volcanoes that formed over a subduction zone created by the convergence of the African and Eurasian plates (Ball, 2016). Vesuvius is classed as a stratovolcano because its eruptions are typically explosive and violent in nature, and are accompanied by pyroclastic flows. These…

Geosciences at Oregon State defines shield volcanoes as the largest type of volcanoes consisting of mostly basalts in its lava flow. The Department also states “Shield volcanoes are the common product of hotspot volcanism but they can also be found along subduction-related volcanic arcs or all by themselves” (The Department of Geosciences at Oregon State). The Piton de la Fournaise has many distinctive characteristics that have constructed the volcano into what it is today. Not only does this…

New York exists on bedrock that tells a tale of millions of years ago, going as far back as the late Mesoproterozoic (1.6 to 1 billion years ago). The layers that make up this bedrock show the conditions of the earth’s surface through many different orogenies, which are times of high grade metamorphism and where plate tectonics makes its biggest changes. The Fordham gneiss was formed a billion years ago (oldest) during the Grenville orogeny (Precambrian) which featured sediment deposits and…

CHAPTER ONE 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1. BACKGROUND AND JUSTIFICATION Pan African Orogen (PAO) was formerly introduced by Kennedy (1964) to designate the peak of a wide spread orogenic thermo-tectonic episode characterized by intense period of reactivation and crustal formation. The term Pan African Orogen was used to describe the structural differentiation of Africa into cratons and mobile belts during the Neoproterozoic to earliest Paleozoic time (Kennedy, 1964). However, Kröner (1984) reformulate…

Wonder Inquiry Assignment A volcano could shoot out magma or lie dormant for its whole life. The topic that I investigated was volcanoes. I remember watching a video about volcanoes in my middle school science class, and at that moment I wanted to become a Volcanologist. That dream was short lived because I knew nothing about volcanoes, and I was not sure how I would go to school to become a Volcanologist. Since then, I have always been curious about volcanoes and one day, I would love to see a…

Results: In Tully Valley, the mudboils are where pressurized groundwater flows up through a restricting layer of silt, clay and fine sand. Mudboils usually take place in subduction zones of the Earth. The mudboil causes the land surface to slowly decline and the erosion of suspended sediment which creates a sequence of concentric ring fractures around the discharging mudboil. Mudboils are driven by pressurized groundwater, geothermic heat, and gases. As a consequence, the mudboils…