DO you have any information about Mount Erebus? We are doing reports about volcanoes and are having trouble finding information about this one. Thanks!

rocky Kandice

Dear Kandice,

I'm not sure that I can tell you a lot about Mt. Erebus. For starters you might want to look for a book called "Volcanoes of the Antartic Plate and Southern Oceans" by WE LeMasurier and JW Thomson. The active Antartic volcanoes are apparently associated with a continental rift - a spreading center that happens to be on land. The best other example of a continental rift is the East African rift.

Here is some of the text from the chapter on Erebus in the above-mentioned book: "Mount Erebus is an active volcano...and contains a persistent convecting lava lake of anorthoclase phonolite magma. Small Strombolian eruptions occur on a daily basis...often ejecting anorthoclase phonolite bombs onto the crater rim...From September to December 1984, larger Strombolian eruptions occurred more frequently, ejecting bombs up to 2 km from the crater and sending small eruption columns to over 2 km high..."

They also say: "The slopes of Mount Erebus between 2000 and 3200 m dip 30-40 degrees and consist of short anorthoclase phonolite flows. The summit region is a plateau with its rim at about 3200 m and sloping around 10 degrees south. The plateau is thought to be a caldera filled by anorthoclase phonolite lavas...The steep-sided active summit cone is located on the south side of the plateau and rises to 3794 m. It is mostly covered by partially decomposed lava bombs and a lag deposit of anorthoclase crystals. An elliptical crater ("Main Crater"), 600 m by 500 m, occurs within the cone, and a smaller inactive crater ("Side Crater") occurs onthe southside...The Vertical walls of these craters reveal that the summit cone is composed mainly of flows, capped by a pyroclastic breccia. "Main Crater," about 110 m deep, has a nearly flat floor. The phonolite lava lake and "Active Vent" occur in the northern half of a circular pit called "Inner Crater," which is about 250 m in diameter and 100 m deep and is situated on the north side of "Main Crater.""

I hope that you can find this book, and that this information is useful to you. I don't know of other internet sites that might have information but you might try looking up the one for New Mexico Tech University. A professor there by the name of Phil Kyle has done a lot of research on Erebus. Also, you may remember a few years ago a robotic device named "Dante". Its first (unsucessful) mission was to crawl into the crater of Erebus.

Scott Rowland, University of Hawaii 

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