Organisms living in volcanic environments are chronically exposed to metals, either as particles or associated with gases, from volcanic emissions, being therefore potential sentinels of the effects derived from such exposure. Concentrations of Ca, Cd, Cu, Mg, Mn, Pb, Rb, and Zn were measured in soil, grass (Lolium perenne), and larvae of Pseudaletia uninpuncta captured in sites exposed and non...

Plinian volcanic eruptions can inject a substantial amount of volcanic ash and gas into the stratosphere, which can present a severe hazard to commercial air traffic. A hazardous volcanic ash eruption was reported on April 14, 2010, and London’s aviation authority issued an alert that an ash plume was moving from an eruption in Iceland towards northwestern Europe. This eruption resulted in the ...

Improving lava flow hazard assessment is one of the most important and challenging fields of volcanology, and has an immediate and practical impact on society. Here, we present a methodology for the quantitative assessment of lava flow hazards based on a combination of field data, numerical simulations and probability analyses. With the extensive data available on historic eruptions of Mt. Etna...

The fundamental role of ice particle collisions in the separation of electric charge and generation of lightning in thunderclouds is now reasonably well established (Latham, 1981; Williams, 1985; Saunders, 1995). Charge separation and lightning are also prevalent in volcanic eruptions. A recent literature survey by McNutt and Davis (2000), and its recent extension, has shown more than 150 incid...

This paper presents an efficient method based on physical laws to model volcanic clouds. Some physical models have been proposed for simulating volcanic clouds [Woods 1988], but most of the previous models are only two or less dimensional or need huge calculation times. Our approach achieves a physical, 3D and efficient modeling of volcanic clouds. The dynamics of volcanic clouds is modeled usi...

TheM7.6 Nicoya earthquake struck at the interface between the Cocos plate and the Caribbean plate on 5 September 2012 inducing a ground acceleration of 0.5 m s−2 at the Irazú-Turrialba volcanic complex. We use data from six seismic stations deployed around and atop the Irazú-Turrialba volcanic complex to show the increase of local seismic activity after the M7.6 Nicoya earthquake. The response ...

Third Nephi 8 preserves a written account of a natural disaster at the time of Christ’s death that many assume to have been caused by volcanic activity. In a modernday science quest, the author examines research done on glacial ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica. Ice-core records can reveal volcanic gases and ashes that are carried throughout the world—the gases are detected by measuring t...

To determine how active volcanism might affect the standard picture of sulfur dioxide photochemistry on Io, we have developed a one-dimensional atmospheric model in which a variety of sulfur-, oxygen-, sodium-, potassium-, and chlorine-bearing volatiles are volcanically outgassed at Io’s surface and then evolve due to photolysis, chemical kinetics, and diffusion. Thermochemical equilibrium calc...

Constraining the timescales of pre-eruptive magmatic processes in active volcanic systems is paramount to understand magma chamber dynamics and the triggers for volcanic eruptions. Temporal information of magmatic processes is locked within the chemical zoning profiles of crystals but can be accessed by means of elemental diffusion chronometry. Mineral compositional zoning testifies to the occu...