In late November, Russia’s restless volcano could erupt, sending a cloud of ash 10 kilometers into the sky and pushing the mountain closer to its original height.
Vezimianny Volcano is a dramatic cone-shaped stratovolcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s far east. It self-destructed in 1956, but a 2020 study found that it had largely returned to normal, and that an eruption like the one that produced the plume on November 26 was the cause. According to the study, the mountain should reach its pre-collapse height between 2030 and 2035.
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But almost immediately the mountain began to reform, and a lava dome began to erect in the middle of this amphitheater. Kamchatka’s Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, part of the Russian Academy of Sciences, has been monitoring the mountain’s growth for years through field surveys, webcams, and observation flights. A series of photos taken from airplanes from 1949 to 2017 show the volcano has nearly reached its previous height, researchers reported in 2020. Researchers found that between 1956 and 2017, the mountain added an average of 932,307.2 cubic feet (26,400 cubic meters) of rock per day.
“The most surprising thing was the rapid growth of new volcanic edifices,” study co-authors Alexander Belousov and Marina Belousova, volcanologists at the Institute of Volcanology, told Live Science via email.
The volcano currently has explosive eruptions on average several times a year. The event in late November produced not only billowing clouds of volcanic ash but also hot avalanches of gas and rock known as pyroclastic flows, the Smithsonian’s World Volcanoes Program reported on Dec. 2.
Once the volcano reaches its original height, the stability of its slopes will become a key issue, Belousov and Belousova told Live Science.
“Similar structures inside horseshoe-shaped craters are known to have experienced another major collapse, potentially resulting in a large explosive eruption,” the researchers said.
High-altitude images reviewed in 2020 showed that the volcano not only ejects explosive clouds of ash and gas, but also grows through what scientists call effusive eruptions, or non-explosive lava flows. The first of these lavas were observed in 1977. Over time, this lava lost its content of the mineral silica, becoming less viscous and less viscous. The layers of this erupting lava piled up, turning Vegemianni back into a cone-shaped stratovolcano.
Belousov and Belousova said researchers are still monitoring the mountain from the ground and from satellites. Although each volcano has its own unique trajectory, there are many volcanoes around the world that have experienced collapse and rebirth, such as Mount St. Helens in the United States.
“The collected dataset is extremely important because the knowledge gained will enable volcanologists around the world to predict the long-term behavior of various volcanoes that have experienced large-scale collapses in history,” the researchers said.
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