Volcanic Hazards Assignment, Essay Example

When people think about the dangers of an active volcano, their minds usually go to molten lava, primarily because lava flow is the most visually stunning and immediate aspect of an eruption. Lava, however, is rarely an active hazard. It emerges from the volcano’s caldera, or mouth, and this is usually a mountainous summit too distant to present a real threat to life.

“The ejection and deposition of…volcanic materials from explosive eruptions perhaps constitute the most common, if not most severe, volcanic hazard” (Marti, Ernst 61). This may include lava but is far more a matter of what any mountainous explosion would create: a shower of rocks and earth in periodic and highly charged bursts, depending on the eruption’s timing. The force behind even a relatively minor eruption can project boulders with extraordinary speed, as well as turn smaller crust debris into potentially fatal missiles.

Volcanoes can wield a substantial number of hazards just as dangerous, however, in indirect ways. For instance, most above-ground volcanic activity is preceded by earthquakes, which can produce devastation on a very broad range. Earthquakes and volcanoes, in fact, typically go hand-in-hand: “The number or size of volcanic earthquakes…usually increases before an eruption” (Decker, Decker 250). Earthquakes are in fact divided into two categories, tectonic and volcanic, which indicates how common the latter is.

Perhaps it is the long-term hazard of atmospheric volcanic pollution, however, which poses the greatest potential threat to life. An eruption of even moderate size releases enough soot and ash into the air to render ordinary breathing impossible within a wide radius of the volcano, and typically for weeks or months. Then, such pollution completely obscures sunlight as well, so it is conjectured that a monumental blast, something on the order of an eruption at Yellowstone National Park, would be of such magnitude that the planet would be plunged into darkness for years. There is evidence of past eruptions at that very site causing vast species extinctions through this single and catastrophic hazard.

Works Cited

Decker, R.W., and Decker, B. Volcanoes. New York, NY: W.H. Freeman and Company, Print.

Marti, J., and  Ernst, G. Volcanoes and the Environment. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Print.