Week 4- Mount Vesuvius, Meagan Valero

Mount Vesuvius, located on the Gulf of Naples in Campania Italy is best known for its eruption in AD 79 that led to to the destruction of the Roman cities of Pampeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, and Stabiae, as well as other settlements. The eruption ejected debris and gases 21 miles in to the air and spewing molten rock and pumice. The eruption ultimately released a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima-Nagasaki bombing.
Vesuvius has erupted a number of times since, and is regarded as one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world due to the densely populated region. Vesuvius was formed as a result of the collision of two tectonic plates, the African and the Eurasian. The former was subducted beneath the latter, deeper into the earth. As the water-saturated sediment of the African plate was pushed to hotter depths, the water boiled off and lowered the melting point of the upper mantel enough to partially melt the rocks. Magma is less dense than the solid rock around it, it was pushed upward breaking its way through a weak spot at the Earths surface, thus forming a volcano. Vesuvius is a distinctive humpback peak, consisting of a large cone partially encircled by a steep rim of a summit caldera caused by the collapse of an earlier and and originally much higher structure called Mount Somma. The height of the main cone has been constantly changed by eruptions but was measured at 4,203 ft in 2010. Vesuvius is regarded as an active volcano, however its current activity produces little more than sulfur-rich steam from vents at the bottom and walls of the crater.