How are volcanoes created?
Joe
Dear Joe,
Volcanoes are a natural way that the Earth and other planets
have of cooling off. Planets are warm in their mantles. Heat inside planets
escapes towards their surfaces. For reasons that are not well understood,
heat sometimes melts rocks, which then rise bouyantly toward the planet's
surface. When the hot rocks - called magma - and included gases break
through the crust, an eruption occurs. The buildup of ash and lava flows
around the eruption hole (or vent) makes a volcano. Some volcanoes erupt
for only a short time - a few days to weeks and never erupt again. Large
volcanoes such as stratovolcanoes and shields erupt many thousands of
times throughout their lifetimes of hundreds of thousands to a few
million years.
I notice from your email address that you are at the University of
California at Santa Barbara. You are lucky to have a world famous
volcanologist there - Prof. Richard Fisher - who you can probably get
additional information from.
Chuck Wood, University of North Dakota
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