Search results for "Vulcan"

Environmental impact of volcanic emissions at Nyiragongo (DRC)

2015

The large amount of trace elements emitted from volcanoes has a strong impact on the close surrounding areas. Nyiragongo Volcano (Democratic Republic of Congo) belongs to the Virunga volcanic chain and is one of the most active volcanoes in Africa. It is characterized by the presence of an active and permanent lava lake with a persistent degassing activity. During a field trip in October-November 2014, we investigated the impact of the volcanogenic deposition in the surrounding of the crater by using different sampling techniques. Rain-gauges were used to collect atmospheric bulk deposition. Active and passive biomonitoring techniques (moss-bags and leaves of endemic plants – Senecio spp. a…

The precious "scientific heritage" of Mariano Valenza: the unknown history of Ludovico Sicardi and the birth of the modern volcanology

2019

Mariano Valenza was an important scientific figure of the geochemical community and a person characterized by his great intellect, diplomacy and human qualities. Sadly, he passed away in July of 2018, leaving a great void. He left us a precious treasure for all the geochemists involved in volcanology: the story and the memory of Ludovico Sicardi. Indeed, Valenza carefully preserved in his office, for a long time, four boxes containing the scientific material belonged to Ludovico Sicardi. As often happens, a little by chance, the precious material returned to light thirty-five years later, on the 20th of April 2018, and was donated to the Museum of Mineralogy of Palermo. It is nowadays subje…

First in-situ sensing of volcanic gas plume composition at Boiling Lake (Dominica, West Indies)

2012

Dominica, a small Caribbean island between Martinique (to the South) and Guadeloupe (to the North), is, because of the high number of potentially active volcanic centres,one of the most susceptible sites to volcanic risk in the Lesser Antilles arc. Seven major volcanic centres, active during the last 10ka, are considered likely to erupt again, and one of these is the Valley of Desolation volcanic complex. This is an area of 0.5 km2, located in on SW Dominica, where a number of small explosion craters, hot springs,bubbling pools and fumaroles testify for vigorous and persistent hydrothermal activity. Two main phreatic explosions have been documented in historical time (1880 and 1997), and th…

Hydrothermal buffering of the SO2/H2S ratio in volcanic gases: Evidence from La Fossa crater fumarolic field, Vulcano Island.

2006

Continuous SO2 flux measurements for Vulcano Island, Italy

2012

<p>The La Fossa cone of Vulcano Island (Aeolian Archipelago, Italy) is a closed conduit volcano. Today, Vulcano Island is characterized by sulfataric activity, with a large fumarolic field that is mainly located in the summit area. A scanning differential optical absorption spectroscopy instrument designed by the Optical Sensing Group of Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, Sweden, was installed in the framework of the European project "Network for Observation of Volcanic and Atmospheric Change", in March 2008. This study presents the first dataset of SO<sub>2</sub> plume fluxes recorded for a closed volcanic system. Between 2008 and 2010, the SO<sub>2</…

Ludovico Sicardi, an unknown pioneer of the Volcanic Geochemical Monitoring

2018

On December of 1977, almost 100 years since its last eruption, intense volcanic activity took place in Vulcano Island (Sicily). The elevated fluxes and the temperature increase of the fumaroles in La Fossa Crater, as well as the variations in their chemical composition, alarmed the scientific community. During that period, in the city of Palermo, Marcello Carapezza along with his colleagues Mariano Valenza and Mario Nuccio, were studying the fumarolic field of Vulcano. After extended bibliographic research, Valenza discovered the studies of Ludovico Sicardi, which were focused on Vulcano, Stromboli, Vesuvio and Campi Flegrei. Considering the fact that Sicardi’s research was performed 60 yea…

Microbial Biofilms Along a Geochemical Gradient at the Shallow-Water Hydrothermal System of Vulcano Island, Mediterranean Sea

2022

Shallow water hydrothermal vents represent highly dynamic environments where strong geochemical gradients can shape microbial communities. Recently, these systems are being widely used for investigating the effects of ocean acidification on biota as vent emissions can release high CO2 concentrations causing local pH reduction. However, other gas species, as well as trace elements and metals, are often released in association with CO2 and can potentially act as confounding factors. In this study, we evaluated the composition, diversity and inferred functional profiles of microbial biofilms in Levante Bay (Vulcano Island, Italy, Mediterranean Sea), a well-studied shallow-water hydrothermal ve…

The contribution of volcanic emissions (Etna, Stromboli and Vulcano) to the atmospheric trace metals budget in the Mediterranean basin

2010

Volcanic emissions represent one of the major natural source for several trace metals (Cd, Cu, As, Pb, Hg and Zn) into the atmosphere both as gaseous and aerosol forms. The Mediterranean Sea can be considered a large geochemical sink for these elements whose source are the huge amounts of aerosols of different origin. The industrialized areas located in the northern part of the basin represent a nearly constant source of the anthropogenic-dominated aerosol. By contrast, the arid and desert regions located at the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean, are the sources of frequent dust “pulses” perturbing the “steady-state” conditions of the local atmosphere through the input of seve…

PETROLOGICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL CONSTRAINTS ON THE PRE-ERUPTIVE CONDITIONS OF LA SOMMATA BASALT AND BROWN TUFFS TEPHRA (AEOLIAN ISLANDS)

2011

This work is focused on two key eruptions of Vulcano Island: 1) the most primitive magma of Vulcano erupted by the La Sommata scoria cone, a silica-undersaturated Ca-rich shoshonitic basalt with olivine-hosted primitive melt inclusions having an ultra-calcic character; 2) the most energetic eruptions of the whole Aeolian Archipelago, the Brown Tuffs (BT) eruptions, which produced several pyroclastic deposits, covering an ample age interval, spread out over a large portion of all Aeolian islands up to the northern coast of Sicily (Lucchi et al., 2008). By complementary studies of melt inclusions and experimental petrology, we pursued the following main objectives: (i) to constrain the pressu…

Mafic magma feeds degassing unrest at Vulcano Island, Italy

2022

AbstractThe benign fuming activity of dormant volcanoes is punctuated by phases of escalating degassing activity that, on some occasions, ultimately prelude to eruption. However, understanding the drivers of such unrest is complicated by complex interplay between magmatic and hydrothermal processes. Some of the most comprehensively characterised degassing unrest have recently been observed at La Fossa cone on Vulcano Island, but whether or not these episodes involve new, volatile-rich ascending magma remains debated. Here, we use volcanic gas measurements, in combination with melt inclusion information, to propose that heightened sulphur dioxide flux during the intense fall 2021 La Fossa un…