Engineering Geosciences

PE-102

Name: Syed Maisam Abbas

Class: First Year

Roll No: 38

Batch: 2014-15

Topic: Formation of Volcanoes and volcanic eruption

Department: Petroleum Engineering

 Formation of Volcanoes and Volcanic
Eruption
By Syed Maisam Abbas

A volcano is a rupture on the crust of any planetary body massive enough, such as
Earth that allows hot molten lava, volcanic ash and dust, and gases to escape from
a magma layer below the surface. The crust of planet Earth is broken into many
major and minor rigid tectonic plates that float on a much hotter, softer layer in its
mantle. When these plates move they collide or spread apart allowing the very hot
molten material called the lava to escape from the mantle. Volcanoes on Earth,
therefore, are generally found in regions where tectonic plates are either diverging
or converging.

Volcanoes can also form where there is stretching and thinning of the crust's
interior plates, e.g., in the East African Rift. Volcanoes usually dont occur in
regions where two tectonic plates slide past one another.

Magma can also push up under the middle of a lithosphere plate, though this is
much less common than magma production around plate boundaries. This
interplate volcanic activity is caused by unusually hot mantle material forming in
the lower mantle and pushing up into the upper mantle. The mantle material, which
forms a plume shape that is from 500 to 1000 km wide, wells up to create a hot
spot under a particular point on the earth. Because of the unusual heat of this
mantle material, it melts, forming magma just under the earth's crust. The hot spot
itself is stationary; but as a continental plate moves over the spot, the magma will
create a string of volcanoes, which die out once they move past the hot spot. The
Hawaii volcanoes were created by such a hot spot, which appears to be at least 70
million years old.

Volcanoes form when hot material from below rises and leaks into the crust. This
hot material, called magma, comes either from a melt of subducted crustal
material, and which is light and buoyant after melting, or it may come from deeper
in the interior of a planet and is light and buoyant because it is very hot.

Magma, rising from lower reaches, gathers in a reservoir, in a weak portion of the
overlying rock called the magma chamber. Eventually, but not always, the magma
erupts onto the surface. Strong earthquakes accompany rising magma, and the
volcanic cone may swell in appearance, just before an eruption. Scientists often
 monitor the changing shape of a volcano, especially prior to an eruption. The
different reasons why a volcano forms are

-Via plumes or hot spots in the lithosphere,

-As a result of subduction of the nearby lithosphere.

Although there are several factors triggering a volcanic eruption, three

predominate: the buoyancy of the magma, the pressure from the exsolved gases in
the magma and the injection of a new batch of magma into an already filled
magma chamber.

As rock inside the earth melts, its mass remains the same while its volume
increases--producing a melt that is less dense than the surrounding rock. This
lighter magma then rises toward the surface by virtue of its buoyancy. If the
density of the magma between the zone of its generation and the surface is less
than that of the surrounding and overlying rocks, the magma reaches the surface
and erupts.

Magmas of also contain dissolved volatiles such as water, sulfur dioxide and
carbon dioxide. Experiments have shown that the amount of a dissolved gas in
 magma (its solubility) at atmospheric pressure is zero, but rises with increasing
pressure. As this magma moves toward the surface, the solubility of the water in
the magma decreases, and so the excess water separates from the magma in the
form of bubbles. As the magma moves closer to the surface, more and more water
exsolves from the magma, thereby increasing the gas/magma ratio in the conduit.
When the volume of bubbles reaches about 75 percent, the magma disintegrates to
pyroclasts (partially molten and solid fragments) and erupts explosively. The third
process that causes volcanic eruptions is an injection of new magma into a
chamber that is already filled with magma of similar or different composition. This
injection forces some of the magma in the chamber to move up in the conduit and
erupt at the surface.

Acknowledgements:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-causes-a-
volcano
http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/interior/volcano_format
ion.html
http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/natural-
disasters/volcano2.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/geography/natural_h
azards/volcanoes_rev1.shtml