Week 4- Volcanoes

NPS Photos

https://www.nps.gov/zion/learn/nature/volcanics.htm

The only volcano that I have had the pleasure of “meeting” is my hot-headed fire dog Vulcan (named after the God of Fire and the idea that volcanoes were a gift from this god thus named after the God!). But aside from that, the volcano that I would love to visit would be the volcanoes in Hawaii but that seems like a distant dream, so I will settle for exploring the volcanic rock at Zion National Park.

So first stop: Zion, Utah! In real life, we will be exploring Zion in October so this was a fun activity to learn about the place we are seeing soon. The proximity to the Basin and Range Province has caused the volcanism rings in the Kolob Plateau. These volcanism rings take form in cone form which the basalt can flow through. These volcanic forms date back to 1.4 million years ago with the youngest flow dating to 100,000 years ago. In the grand scheme of things, the youngest flow is not that old! The cones can be seen in the photo above as well! The last volcanic activity from this area has not happened in the last 10,000 years… safe to say we are not expecting anything anytime soon either, perhaps. The volcano here is also listed as “most likely extinct” due to the inactivity with the volcanic field including 8,947 ft of land. While there has not been much volcanic activity, there have been a ton of small earthquake activity in the area. Just recently, on 25 July there was a small magnitude earthquake (1.8) nearby. I wouldn't find this shocking since it's a small magnitude, but what I found interesting that nearby there have been 23 of these earthquakes and for the month of July the largest magnitude being between 2-3 all within a 30km radius of Kolob Plateau. This is a notable mention because not all volcanic activity includes earthquakes and vice versa, but this could be an indication of the plates movement of magma if it is happening directly below a volcano. It very well could be just a fun fact about this area, however!

Screen Snap Taken from VolcanoDiscovery.com

https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/kolob-earthquakes.html

It’s definitely on my list of places we will see this October and I look forward to bringing Vulcan to see the volcano!

Work Citied

Kolob. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.volcanodiscovery.com/kolob.html

Volcanic Rocks. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.nps.gov/zion/learn/nature/volcanics.htm

Volcano World. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/how-are-volcanoes-and-earthquakes-related