Ecuador's 'exploder' volcano lights up night sky
- Video at link -
Ecuador's El Reventador lit up the night sky with lava following an increase in rumblings at the volcano in recent weeks.
According to reports, a stream of smoke reached some 1.2 km (about .7 miles) above the volcano's crater and incandescent rocks spewed out under the moonlight. El Reventador is located near Quito's Amazon region and is the country's most active volcano. It's a popular site for hikers but authorities have warned tourists to stay away from the area.
Updated: May 13, 2019 10:17 AM
https://www.thenational.ae/world/the-americas/ecuador-s-exploder-volcano-lights-up-night-sky-1.860695
Environment and energy:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1127127415
Ecuador’s El Reventador Volcano Continually Remakes Itself
A research team from Ecuador’s Geophysical Institute keeps a close eye on an unusually active and unstable volcano in the nation’s remote jungles.
Explosion and pyroclastic flows at El Reventador volcano. The Instituto Geofísico of the Escuela Politécnica Nacional in Quito, Ecuador, monitors this active volcano using field campaigns and a network of instruments. Credit: E. Gaunt, IG/EPN
By Marco Almeida, H. Elizabeth Gaunt, and Patricio Ramón 18 March 2019
El Reventador is currently the most active volcano in Ecuador. When this volcano (whose name translates as the Exploder) erupts, it sends incandescent rock projectiles into the air, along with ash columns approximately 3 kilometers high. The volcano also releases significant amounts of lava flows, volcanic bombs, and ash from flow and fall deposits onto the surrounding ground. This relatively small stratovolcano has destroyed and rebuilt its edifice on a large scale throughout its evolution. Its eruptive behavior changes rapidly, and its complex behavior is significantly different from that of all other volcanoes in the Ecuadorian Andes.
During the past 3 years, El Reventador has repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt itself on a smaller scale, and inherent instabilities in its edifice pose an ongoing hazard. This hazard is particularly severe on the active cone, where complex effusive and explosive events occur on a daily basis. Our research group, which monitors this remote jungle volcano, has found evidence of multiple small collapses in the border flanks of the crater, complex multivent behavior, and the opening and closing of new vents on a relatively short timescale—weeks to months. Our studies are providing new insights into the inner workings of this volcanic system.
Monitoring El Reventador
El Reventador (Figure 1a) is part of the back-arc volcanism on the eastern side of the Cordillera Real of Ecuador, located approximately 90 kilometers (km) east of the capital city of Quito. The Instituto Geofísico (IG) of the Escuela Politécnica Nacional (EPN) in Quito monitors the activity of this remote volcano. A very large explosive eruption in 2002 initiated the current period of activity, prompting the IG to install a permanent, telemetered seismic monitoring station in 2003.
Over the past 16 years, the IG’s monitoring capabilities at El Reventador have expanded into a comprehensive network of seismometers, infrasound stations, thermal and visual cameras, a digital optical absorption spectroscopy (DOAS) gas monitoring station, and acoustic flowmeter lahar monitoring stations within the caldera itself (Figure 1b). Since 2016, 10 ash meters installed on the volcano have collected high-quality volcanic ash samples for ongoing petrological monitoring of the eruption [Bernard, 2013].
More:
https://eos.org/project-updates/ecuadors-el-reventador-volcano-continually-remakes-itself
