Posted on 02/25/2007 1:47:41 PM PST by Strategerist
The ground on the western edges of Naples, Italy is rising, spurring worries of a possible volcanic eruption, but scientists now think they know exactly what is causing the uplift and may be able to better predict any potential eruption.
Using GPS measurements, a group of scientists at the National Institute of Geophysics and Vulcanology in Italy monitored the ground’s motions for several years, and based on the patterns they observed, they believe the uplifting is caused by magma intruding from a shallow chamber.
The rising motions of the ground reached a peak rate of about three feet per year during two major uplift episodes in the last few decades. Some previous episode of the alternate uplifting and subsidence left its mark: Bore holes from mollusks can be found on Roman pillars in the area, indicating the ground once subsided below water and has since risen up again.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
Things to know:
1) There's no actual agreed-on Supervolcano definition, but Campei Flegrei falls at the lower end - it's a "small" supervolcano - the eruption 40,000 years ago was about 1/5th to 1/7th the size of the last Yellowstone Caldera Eruption.
2) MOST of the eruptions at Calderas are small. In between the "big" blasts there are all sorts of lava flows, "small" Mt. St. Helens-sized eruptions, etc. People have gotten it into their heads somehow that all eruptions at supervolcanoes are the end of the world ones.
3) Calderas "breathe" constantly without erupting - often over incredible distances. Iwo Jima is part of a caldera and it's risen over 400 feet in the last 400 years.
4) I'd like to pre-declare anyone making the same old tired and clueless jokes about volcanoes and global warming that appear on EVERY volcano thread a moron :-)
Do you have any information on how much Hawai'i (the Big Island) is growing per year?
OMG! Algore wrong??????
Drill down and then toss in a some giant concrete balls.
Hmm...well Hawaii builds out from lava flows some number of acres a year which I don't remember, and it varies a lot - but then sometimes it forms a shelf that breaks off and then you lose land area.
This is a different thing - the whole ground surface inflates like a balloon from magma below.
I was in Italy a couple of weeks ago and went to Pompei. I'd been there before, but this was a great trip because the weather was cool enough and the place was unpopulated enough so that I could spend a long time really looking at things.
It was pretty stunning to think of all those folks in what was a very modern, well-laid out and bustling city, waking up one morning - and gone the next. The entire city disappeared in 24 hours; most of its residents died on the beach, having run down there in hopes they'd be picked up by ships. But obviously, with clouds of poisonous gases (as Livy found out) and volcanic mud shooting out, nobody could get close enough to rescue them, and they died there on the beach.
Nothing to laugh about.
Naples has multiple options in which volcanoes will destroy it.
Human-induced global warming at fault, I'm sure.
Around those Naples and Pompeii days I spent about a week in Rome. I was in Rome and Naples during my Navy days many a long year ago and always wanted to show my wife just a bit of that part of my life.
The Bay of Naples is such a beautiful place. I wouldn't argue for a second about an opportunity to go back. Still, there isn't much in Naples proper that I would put on my list of places to see. There is so much more in the rest of Italy.
Calderas are fascinating entities. It's inevitable another will blow up one of these days. The misery that will cause. I guess I won't feel bad if I'm not around to see it.
Do Al Gore jokes count towards moronity?
Pics
Thanks for the unwarranted slam on New Orleans. Mind if I pre-declare you a moron before you post again?
I was there in 1957 (as a 10yr old kid), and from what I understand there was more of it open then than now. The museum was phenomenal with the castings of the victims.
The power of not saying anything. Gotta make all those people feel so comfortable.
No kidding! I was there on the 14th. Just shows you we Freepers get around!
Going to look at the pix now...
Visit it now and you'll really be impressed!
They've done a lot of work and you can see a lot more and it's better explained. One hint - rent the recorded audioguide or go with one of the real human person guides who hang out in front of the gates. They are about the same price.
I saw it a few years ago and they had more explanatory material on multi-lingual signs in front of the sites. Now, they have much less material and it's only in Italian (which I read, but maybe everybody else does not...).
In addition to Pompei, there's also Herculaneum and Oplontis. Given those reminders, the only thing I can think is that Neapolitans are incurable optimists.
You need to keep your drilling mud pretty darn heavy or the well will have a tendency to blow out and you'll get some fireballs back at you.
That's true - I was at San Martino (a former monastery on a high point in Naples) and when I moved around to take a photo or two, I thought - ooops, another volcano.
I hope not, though, because Naples is a wonderful place and I loved the Napolitanos, probably because I am an ex New Yorker and many of our Italian immigrants were from Naples and Southern Italy. So it's like going home.
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