Volcano

mountain or hill formed by the accumulation of materials erupted through one or more openings (called volcanic vents) in the earth's surface. The term volcano can also refer to the vents themselves. Most volcanoes have steep sides, but some can be gently sloping mountains or even flat tablelands, plateaus, or plains. The volcanoes above sea level are the best known, but the vast majority of the world's volcanoes lie beneath the sea, formed along the global oceanic ridge systems that crisscross the deep ocean floor (see Plate Tectonics). According to the Smithsonian Institution, 1,511 above-sea volcanoes have been active during the past 10,000 years, 539 of them erupting one or more times during written history. On average, 50 to 60 above-sea volcanoes worldwide are active in any given year; about half of these are continuations of eruptions from previous years, and the rest are new.

Volcano formation
All volcanoes are formed by the accumulation of magma (molten rock that forms below the earth's surface). Magma can erupt through one or more volcanic vents, which can be a single opening, a cluster of openings, or a long crack, called a fissure vent. It forms deep within the earth, generally within the upper part of the mantle (one of the layers of the earths crust), or less commonly, within the base of the earth's crust. High temperatures and pressures are needed to form magma. The solid mantle or crustal rock must be melted under conditions typically reached at depths of 80 to 100 km (50 to 60 mi) below the earths surface. See also Earth; Magma. Once tiny droplets of magma are formed, they begin to rise because the magma is less dense than the solid rock surrounding it. The processes that cause the magma to rise are poorly understood, but it generally moves upward toward lower pressure regions, squeezing into spaces between minerals within the solid rock. As the individual magma droplets rise, they join to form everlarger blobs and move toward the surface. The larger the rising blob of magma, the easier it moves. Rising magma does not reach the surface in a steady manner but tends to accumulate in one or more underground storage regions, called magma reservoirs, before it erupts onto the surface. With each eruption, whether explosive or nonexplosive, the material erupted adds another layer to the growing volcano. After many eruptions, the volcanic materials pile up around the vent or vents. These piles form a topographic feature, such as a hill, mountain, plateau, or crater, that we recognize as a volcano. Most of the earth's volcanoes are formed beneath the oceans, and their locations have been documented in recent decades by mapping of the ocean floor. See also Ocean and Oceanography.

Types of volcanoes
Volcanoes come in different shapes and sizes, depending on the makeup of the magma, the style of the eruption, and how often they erupt. The major types of volcanoes, roughly in order of increasing size, are cinder cones, composite volcanoes (also called stratovolcanoes), shield volcanoes, calderas, and plateaus. Calderas and plateaus are shaped differently than traditional volcanoesneither has a mountain-like shape.

Cinder cone
Cinder cones are volcanoes that are made primarily of cinders, a loose volcanic material. When cinder cones erupt, the cinders tend to pile up and form the shape of a small mountain. Cinder cones are generally not very tall, only a few hundred meters, because the loose cinders tend to slide off of the sides because of gravity. Most cinder cones are located in geologically young regions.

Cinder cones and composite volcanoes have the familiar conelike shape that people most often associate with volcanoes. Some of these form beautifully symmetrical volcanic hills or mountains such as Parcutin Volcano in Mexico and Mount Fuji in Japan. Although both cinder cones and composite volcanoes are mostly the results of explosive eruptions, cinder cones consist exclusively of fragmental lava. This fragmental lava is erupted explosively and made up of cinders. Cinder cones are typically much smaller than composite volcanoes for two reasons: (1) they involve only weakly explosive, small-volume eruptions of basaltic cinder that does not travel far from the vent; and (2) they usually have a short lifeoften only a single eruptive burst before becoming extinct. In contrast, composite volcanoes can grow much larger because they represent the accumulated products of repeated eruptions from the same vent(s) over a long time. Composite volcanoes are composed of explosively erupted pyroclastic materials layered with nonexplosively erupted lava flows and deposits of volcanic debris. They are mostly built from materials that come from andesitic or dacitic lava. In some composite volcanoes that undergo a major explosive eruption, such as Mount Saint Helens, nonexplosive extrusions of lava within the summit crater can later construct a bulbous mound of accumulated lava. This mound is called a lava dome or a volcanic dome.

Shield volcano
Shield volcanoes (also called volcanic shields) get their name from their distinctive, gently sloping mound-like shapes that resemble the fighting shields that ancient warriors carried into battle. Their shapes reflect the fact that they are constructed mainly of countless fluid basaltic lava flows that erupted nonexplosively. Such flows can easily spread great distances from the feeding volcanic vents, similar to the spreading out of hot syrup poured onto a plate. Volcanic shields may be either small or large, and the largest shield volcanoes are many times larger than the largest composite volcanoes. The classic examples of shield volcanoes are the Hawaiian volcanoes Mauna Loa and Kilauea.

Kilauea erupts .one of the shield volcanoes are the Hawaiian volcanoes .

Caldera
A caldera is a round or oval-shaped low-lying area that forms when the ground collapses because of explosive eruptions. An explosive eruption can explode the top off of the mountain or eject all of the magma that is inside the volcano. Either of these actions may cause the volcano to collapse. Calderas can be bigger than the largest shield volcanoes in diameter. Such volcanic features, if geologically young, are often outlined by an irregular, steep-walled boundary (a caldera rim), which reflects the original ringlike zone, or fault, along which the ground collapse occurred. Some calderas have hills and mountains rising within them, called resurgent domes, that reflect volcanic activity after the initial collapse. Good examples of calderas can be seen at Yellowstone National Park (Wyoming) and Long Valley (eastern California). These were formed by explosive eruptions in the geologic past that were thousands of times larger than any

historical eruption. Some calderas are filled with water, forming lakes such as Crater Lake in Oregon. Such powerful caldera-forming eruptions, whose ash deposits can be traced thousands of kilometers from their sources, potentially pose the greatest volcanic hazards to society; luckily, they are very rare geological events.

Crater lake in Oregon

Volcanic plateaus
Some of the largest volcanic features on earth do not actually look like volcanoes. Instead, they form extensive, nearly flat-topped accumulations of erupted materials. These materials form volcanic plateaus or plains covering many thousands of square kilometers. The volcanic materials can be either very fluid basaltic lava flows or far-traveled pyroclastic flows. The basaltic lava flows are called flood or plateau basalts and are erupted from many fissure vents. The Columbia Plateau in the states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho is an example of flood basalts. The pyroclastic flows, or ash flows, are from huge explosive caldera-forming eruptions. The Yellowstone Plateau of Wyoming and Montana is built of pyroclastic flow.

Composition of magma
Magmas are liquids that contain a variety of melted minerals and dissolved gases. Because magmas form deep underground, however, geologists cannot directly observe and measure their original composition. This difficulty has led to controversy over the exact chemical composition of magmas. Geologists cannot simply assume it is the same as the composition of the rock in the source region. One reason for this is that the source rock may melt only partially, releasing only the minerals with the lowest melting points. For this reason, the composition of magma produced by melting 1 percent of a rock is different from the composition of magma produced by melting 20 percent of a rock. Experiments have shown that the temperature and pressure of the location within the earth, and the amount of water present at that location affect the amount of melting. Because temperature and pressure increase as depth within the earth increases, melting an identical source rock at different depths will produce magmas of different composition. Combining these considerations with the fact that the composition of the source rock may be different in different geographic regions, there is a considerable range of possible compositions for magma. As magma moves toward the surface, the pressure and temperature decrease, which causes partial crystallization, or the formation of mineral crystals within the magma. The compositions of the minerals that crystallize are different from the initial composition of the magma because of changes in temperature and pressure, hence the composition of the remaining liquid changes. The resultant crystals may separate from the liquid either by sinking or by a process known as filter-pressing, in which pressure compresses the liquid and causes it to move toward regions of lower pressure while leaving the crystals behind. As a result, the composition of the remaining magma is different from that of the initial magma. This process is known as magmatic differentiation, and is the principal mechanism whereby a wide variety of magmas and rocks can be produced from a single primary magma (see Igneous Rock: Formation of Igneous Rocks). The composition of a magma can also be modified by chemical interactions with, and melting of, the rocks through which it passes on its way upward. This process is known as assimilation. Magma cannot usually supply enough heat to melt a large amount of the surrounding rock, so assimilation seldom produces a significant change in the composition of a magma. Magmas also contain dissolved gases, because gases are especially soluble (easily dissolved) in liquids when the liquids are under pressure. Magma deep underground is under thousands of atmospheres (units of measure) of pressure due to the weight of the overlying rock. Gases commonly dissolved in magma are carbon dioxide, water vapor, and sulfur dioxide.

Composition of lava
Lava is magma that breaks the surface and erupts from a volcano. If the magma is very fluid, it flows rapidly down the volcanos slopes. Lava that is more sticky and less fluid moves slower.

Lava flows that have a continuous, smooth, ropy, or billowy surface are called pahoehoe (pronounced pah HOH ee hoh ee) flows, while aa (pronounced ah ah) flows have a jagged surface composed of loose, irregularly shaped lava chunks. Once cooled, pahoehoe forms smooth rocks, while aa forms jagged rocks. The words pahoehoe and aa are Hawaiian terms that describe the texture of the lava. Lava may also be described in terms of its composition and the type of rock it forms. Basalt, andesite, , and rhyolite are all different kinds of rock that form from lava. Each type of rock, and the lava from which it forms, contains a different amount of the compound silicon dioxide. Basaltic lava has the least amount of silicon dioxide, andesitic and dacitic lava have medium levels of silicon dioxide, while rhyolitic lava has the most. See also Lava; Igneous Rock. Most lava, on cooling, forms silicate rocksrocks that contain silicon and oxygen. Lava is classified according to which silicate rocks it forms: basalt, rhyolite, or andesite. Basaltic lava is dark in color and rich in magnesium and iron, but poor in silicon. Rhyolitic lava is light colored and poor in magnesium and iron, but rich in silicon. Andesitic lava is intermediate in composition between basaltic and rhyolitic lava. While color is often sufficient to classify lava informally, formal identification requires chemical analysis in a laboratory. If silica (silicon dioxide) makes up more than 65 percent of the weight of the lava, then the lava is rhyolitic. If the silica content is between 65 percent and 50 percent by weight, then the lava is andesitic. If the silica content is less than 50 percent by weight, then the lava is basaltic. See also Igneous Rock: Classification by Composition.