Volcano Mount Vesuvius

Below is a free term papers summary of the paper "Volcano Mount Vesuvius." If you sign up, you can be reading the rest of this term papers in under two minutes. Registered users should login to view this term paper.

Term Paper Title	Volcano Mount Vesuvius
# of Words	3252
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	13.01

Volcano Mount Vesuvius

                     Mount Vesuvius is a volcano located in southern Italy, near the bay of Naples and the city of Naples.  It is the only active volcano on the European mainland. Vesuvius rises to a height of 1277 m (4190 ft). Vesuvio (Vesuvius) is probably the most famous volcano on earth, and is one of the most dangerous.
       Mount Vesuvius is a strato-volcano consisting of a volcanic cone (Gran                          Cono) that was built within a summit caldera (Mount Somma). The Somma-Vesuvius complex has formed over the last 25,000 years by means of a sequence of eruptions of variable explosiveness, ranging from the quiet lava outpourings that characterized much of the latest activity (for example from 1881 to 1899 and from 1926 to 1930) to the explosive Plinian eruptions, including the one that destroyed Pompeii and killed thousands of people in 79 A.D. At least seven Plinian eruptions have been identified in
the eruptive history of Somma-Vesuvius (1). Each was preceded by a long period of stillness, which in the case of the 79 A.D. eruption lasted about 700 years. These eruptions were fed by viscous water-rich phonotitic to tephritic phonolitic magmas that appear to have differentiated in shallow crustal conditions. They are believed to have slowly filled a reservoir where differentiation was driven by compositional convection. A minimum depth of about 3 km was inferred for the top of the magmatic reservoir from
mineral equilibria of metamorphic carbonate ejecta (2). Fluid inclusions ([CO.sub.2] and [H.sub.2]O-[CO.sub.2]) in clinopyroxenes from cumulate and nodules indicate a trapping pressure of 1.0 to 2.5 kbar at about 1200 [degrees]C, suggesting that these minerals crystallized at depths of 4 to 10 km (3). The differentiated magma fraction was about 30% of the total magma in the reservoir, and a volume of about 2 to 3 [km.sup.3] was
inferred for the reservoir (4). The magma ascent to the surface occurred through a conduit of possibly 70 to 100 m in diameter (5). A thermal model predicts that such a reservoir should contain a core of partially molten magma (6) that can be detected by high-resolution seismic tomography.

The earliest outcropping volcanic deposits date back to about 25,000 years ago.  The lavas observed at a -1125 m bore-hole are about 0,3-0,5 million years old. It is          known for the first eruption of which an eyewitness account is preserved, in 79 AD.       Geologically, Vesuvio is unique for its...

This is not the end of the termpaper! Register below to see the complete version of this term paper.

Membership Plans	Credit Card	Check

1 month membership

3 month membership (You Save 50%)

6 month membership (You Save 67%)

Copyright © 2002-2007 Mid Term Papers. All rights reserved. This term papers website is used for research purposes only.
If you have forgotten your username or password, please click here.
If you like to cancel your account, please click here.

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12 - 13 - 14 - 15 - 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22