I've got a new a computer and it's really fucking exciting

As the title may suggest - I've got a new computer because I have been led to believe that the point of having one of those job things is that you can get money to buy cool shit like computers- which is pretty much what I've done. So far since having the computer all I've done is watch football and I'm really gonna try to not just use it as a TV and radio hence this post. This post is based on cool shit from the internet, which I can now see through the beauty of my lovely computer. First is this, which is basically really great photos and everyone loves a good volcano picture. I think this Etna one is my fave.

I've also been looking at this website which I have seen before but it has loads of volcano holidays which I want to go on. This is especially relevant as me and my family are semi-seriously talking about going on a holiday, obviously this has massive potential to be fucking horrendous and in my vast experience the way to make something not fucking horrendous is to involve shit loads of volcanoes. As my parents are some of the few people who actually read this I think that we should all go on a round the world volcano tour which coasts under €9000, basically a bargain. Any volcanic holiday would obviously be good but a round the world one would be my first preference. Now I'm pretty sure I've got some episodes of the archers and pointless to catch up on. 

Eruption update

Sinabung was one of the first volcanoes of the week, way back in September 2010, (amazing that this format of VC has been going for so long) and has since been erupting sporadically (trying to up my clueless references). Before this the volcano had been dormant for 400 years. The volcano is in North Sumatra which is one of Indonesia's biggest islands and has been severely deforested (but that's a topic for later). In general the eruptions haven't been particularly plinian or explosive (VEI = 2) but they have been really fucking ashy. This is really shit because it means that communities have to be evacuated and relocated with crops being destroyed. Constant raining ash must just be so depressing, just seeing endless grey skies and having to protect your homes and families. There was a more violent phase to the eruption in January and February this year which killed 17 people. At the moment the eruption is continuing and the alert level has been raised this week.

See really grey ash

To me it seems that volcanic activity has been increasing lately, but whether this is true or not is in doubt. Obviously no one really knows if it is and there are loads of conflicting theories and I haven't read them, but it is actually really interesting and if I can be bothered I will research it. To summarise possible theories are it's part of climate change/ general planet in crisis shit or that its do to with globalisation/ access to information shit. Which is all very interesting. 

Death Reporting

Since the Ontake eruption the death toll has been rising (to over 50) with more and more tragic stories of those who didn't make it down from the volcano. What has made this even more eerie is that many of these reports have come directly from the victims through phone photos etc. This is one of the many consequences of new technology and probably not a good one as it allows people to obsess, which obviously you would do given the chance. Receiving messages from the dead seems new and like a massive drawback of modern technology, but is it actually so new and just that the methods have changed? I know that Pliny the Younger did survive the Vesuvius eruption (he is dead now) but it is his accounts that have been useful for volcanologists and is often considered the first recording of an eruption. And maybe that's a comforting way to look at things that actually the videos and photos are probably really useful for studying eruptions. Probably when people die in such tragic circumstances then everything would make it worse, knowing what they were doing just before they died but so would not knowing what they were doing.

Easter hotspot

A dear friend of the volcano club asked me the write about Chilean volcanoes and after some brief research I'm decided to focus on Easter Island. Which being not being mainland Chile may not be want was wanted but fuck it, it's my blog (aforementioned dear friend is a fan of VCs 'insane amount of swearing'). I didn't really know much about Easter Island apart from the obvious 'blah blah blah shit loads of massive heads blah blah blah how the fuck did they get there blah blah', but there is actually way more interesting stuff than all that bollocks. Such as the island is volcanic and has really interesting vegetation, I suppose that this is quite obvious it being in the middle of the Pacific. The map of the island is very pleasing because it's a nice triangle shape and the three corners have volcanoes in, presumably how the island was formed. All the volcanoes on the island are extinct, the largest is Terevaka, top of the map and is under 4000,000 years old and according to wikipedia easy to walk up, which sounds like a laugh. The island (and volcanic activity) is the result of being between the Nazcar and Pacific plates creating the Easter hotspot, which it's what I'm going to call the VC Easter weekend event.

As I'm sure everyone is aware Easter Island is in the middle of fucking nowhere, the closest inhabited island is Pitcairn which is also in the middle of fucking nowhere. Around 6,000 people live on the island, the island was probably populated around 1000CE with people travelling by canoe from around 2,000 miles away (most probably because they were absolutely mental). After settling the island went through a period of habitat degradation and deforestation (where was REDD when you needed it, little forestry joke for you there), this was caused by clearing and the introduction of the Polynesian rat. Many of the indigenous trees are now completely extinct or extinct in the wild like the toromiro tree which they are trying to reintroduce to the island. Birdman or Tangata Manu cults existed on the island, where members of each clan had to collect the first tern egg of the season from the 3.9 hectare island Moto Nui (bottom left on the map) and swim back to Rapa Nui (Polynesian name for easter island), the winner got to do loads of cool shit for the next year. To get back to the island the contestants had to climb the Orongo volcano and then lead a procession to a beach on the west or to another volcano on the east of the island. The practised was stopped by Christians in the 1860s, then the islanders went through a really shit time with Peruvian slave raiders and small pox. The indigenuous population decreased by 97% in 10 years. There were over 800 statues or Moai found on the island which are made from volcanic ash or tuff (which is easy to work with).  Islanders didn't get Chilean citizenship until 1966. 

Toromiro tree (above) and Rano Raraku (below)

So that's some shit about Easter Island which is pretty cool, there is more interesting stuff about the island like the indigenous rights movement and its the only place they've ever found Polynesian script. But I can't be fucked to write about that now. I might write about more Chilean volcanoes as they do look interesting or more Pacific islands soon.

Encyclopaedia Plates

These plates were taken from an old set of national encyclopaedias which are full of amazing pictures. Obviously the main reason for keeping encyclopaedias is for the pictures, I have 14 volumes with all the text taken out (cos who can be bothered reading) as well as all the plates from a children's encyclopaedia including shit loads of colour ones. I really want to make something with them but it's quite hard to think of stuff to make where paper is the best material to use, I did make a wallet but predictably it fell apart. But I will try and preserve these ones for scientific interest, I use the term scientific very loosely.

I really like the bottom left picture here, it looks like some kinda sci-film set. As you may be able to tell from other recent posts, I'm really into geological profiles at the moment. 

 I really hope that railway still exists.

 This is my favourite page, I particularly like the bay of naples.

Really like the paths of lava shown here but 'Dykes of Slaggy Lava' - way harsh, Tai. 

It's really nice seeing little things like this which remind me why I like volcanoes so much and make me want to write blog posts and stuff which I've been neglecting a lot recently. That's the great thing about volcanoes that are linked to pretty much everything so I'm always seeing interesting things like this. 

Forests and Volcanoes

As any volcano club fans will know- the reason I like volcanoes is that they are linked to pretty much everything. The main reason I am giving for the recent absence of the volcano club is that I have been writing my masters thesis and generally studying and I can't really be expected to write more than one thing at once. For those who don't know I have been studying forestry and one of the main reasons I like forests is that they are also linked to pretty much everything, there are other reasons such as I actually like ecology, trees and all that crap. As volcanoes are linked to everything and so are forests then they are obviously linked to each other - but not in a vague tenuous shit way. You could say that the reason I like forests and volcanoes is because I don't actually them and what I really like is all the other stuff but you'd would be wrong. Anyway I thought that combining volcanoes and forests would be the perfect way to relaunch the VC blog, which is what this is, a fucking relaunch. The new picture at the top = relaunch, there was even a relaunch party with wine in plastic cups, bombay mix and volcanic experts, I might have made the relaunch party up but it sounds fun, I should do it for real. Anyway back to the forests and the volcanoes the basis is that the areas surrounding volcanoes tend to have rich soils which can lead to interesting plant life, here are three examples.

For no real reason I've linked songs to the three forests below, they are all great songs and connected to the forests in my mind at least, also I'm working on a volcano compilation so send me any suggestions.

1. Aokigahara 
I've written about this forests lots before, basically it's at the base of Mount Fuji (my favourite volcano), is one of the mostly densely vegetated places in the world and a suicide hotspot. The forest is quite small and so dense and dark that there are very few animals there, obviously it's haunted too. It is also known as the sea of trees which sounds quite pretty and reminds me of the linked song, because thinking of a suicide forest wasn't depressing enough.

Do not do a google image search for Aokigahara unless you want to see dead bodies in a forest. 

2. Eastern Java

All of Java is volcanic and has great forests and it's a place with volcanoes that I have actually been to! While I have been to West and Central Java and I did see some forests (because I was there on a forestry field trip) I didn't get the volcanic vibe. But in East Java I went to both forests and volcanoes, yes it was fucking great. Volcanic soils tend to be good due to the breakdown of nutrients and large amounts of trace elements (which can be limiting to plants) when you go to areas with volcanoes you can really see this. Ijen is probably the best volcano to use as an example, because I went there twice and is surrounded by a lovely forest, where I saw monkeys. It is the volcano where they do sulphur mining, which is job that does not pay well especially when considering the health hazards, I did have a great conversation about Wayne Rooney with one of the sulphur miners though. 

Anyway back to my point, amazingly I do actually have one, which is that you can actually see effect the volcanicity has on the soil. Quite soon before I climbed the volcano there had been heat flare things (technical term) meaning that most of the vegetation at the top of the volcano had been killed. This meant you could really see the rocks and soil which were all really amazing colours and small plants were springing up everywhere as you can see in the above pictures. You have to climb the volcano at night (otherwise it's too hot) so the first time I really saw the area surrounding the volcano was when climbing down. Which was a really weird experience as you started at this strange barren crater and walked down into this amazingly lush forest and you could really see the zonation and were also aware of how special the conditions were. So it was quite a nice illustration of what a field trip is actually for; that when you actually see something even for a really short period time it makes so much more sense than any reading or anything else you can do (even though we weren't really studying any of the shit I've just said). 

3. Pacific Northwest
I don't really know much about this, not so surprising I know but I live a state of fear where someone will tell me everything I've written on my blog is crap, so this is just a little disclaimer, please don't use this to write essays or anything. But here are two facts that I know to be true- this area has shitloads of volcanic activity and this area has shit hot forests. So I think that probably all the volcanic activity had some kinda long term positive effect on soil quality on the growth of plants in this area, which is home to the most productive temperate rainforest in the world, but I can't find much info on it (it's not on Wikipedia). You learn shitloads about these trees when studying forestry as lots of the trees such as Douglas Fir and Sitka Spruce as really fast growing and are used in European forestry. There was also a lot of interesting forestry techniques that was pioneered here, the main volcanoes are the cascade range which contains Mount St. Helens. It's also the bit of USA and Canada that looks amazingly great and people keep going there and I really want to go.

Loads of volcanoes

A volcano and a forest! (Mount Bachelor to be precise, which is just south of Mount Hood)

That's a little bit about some volcanic forests, hopefully marking the beginning of period of high VC activity. 

Volcano of the Week #26 - Mount Ontake

It's been a while since I've done one of these and it's a bit of a sad one. I've been planning stuff for the blog all week but considering the nature of volcanoes, it is fitting that my plan was disrupted by yesterdays eruption. It's quite big news so I imagine people know quite a lot about it (probably more than me). Mount Ontake is Japan's second biggest volcano, after Fuji, both volcanoes are in the mountainous Chubu region which is just south and west of Tokyo. Its quite hard to find out exactly when the volcano last erupted but there hasn't been a major eruption in modern times. So far over 30 people have died in the eruption, the volcano is a popular hiking spot particularly at this time of year and it's pretty beautiful, it also has religious significance and there are temples and shrines in the area.

as I said, beauts

There were hundreds of people who did manage to evacuate the volcano and the eruption had little warning. Obviously (lying on a fault line) volcanic activity in Japan is quite high and there was a bit of seismic activity but not enough to suggest the volcano was about to erupt so soon. I'm no volcanologist but what I do know is that predicting eruptions is difficult and not exactly accurate all the time. Climbing volcanoes is a risk but so are most worthwhile things (also mundane ones like crossing the road). So hopefully there will be no more fatalities and the rescue efforts go smoothly. There are loads of awesome (in the true sense of the word) pictures and videos of the eruption and here is a more scientific blog if people are interested.

Really scary video.