Culture Volcans, a volcano blog (in French), alerted me to something interesting in Colombia. The Colombian geological survey, INGEOMINAS, is installing its first seismometer at the little-known volcanic area known as Laguna San Diego (or Volcan San Diego) in the province of Caldas. San Diego is one of the northernmost outposts of potential volcanism in Colombia and very little is known about the volcano — and you’d likely miss it if you weren’t looking. The Landsat 7 image of the area taken 2002 shows the lake that lies within a small crater whose rim has clearly been weathered and vegetated. The lake itself is small, only about a kilometer across and about 1.3 kilometers long while the crater in which the lake is nested is only ~2.5 by 3 kilometers. Perched on the edge is a small stratovolcano (or possibly a cinder cone) of unknown age known as Morro de San Diego. All in all, a fairly small geographic feature nestled in the mountains 90 kilometers southeast of Medellin. As I said, not much is known about Volcán San Diego
Geologists from the University of Texas, Austin, have discovered a sunken chain of volcanic islands that may have blocked an ocean current around Antarctica tens of millions of years ago. The discovery could help explain anomalies in ancient climate data, which could improve models used to predict Earth's future climate as carbon dioxide builds in the atmosphere. (NASA Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer)
Ancient volcanoes discovered deep in the ocean off Antarctica may explain a climate mystery critical to predicting Earth’s fate as humans pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
University of Texas geologists dredging thousands of feet below the surface of the central Scotia Sea off the southeastern tip of South America hauled up volcanic rock after their sonar mapping showed formations that looked uncannily like a sunken island chain.
July 9, 2013 – JAPAN – VAAC Tokyo reported a small ash plume from the volcano at 5,000 ft (1.5 km) elevation today. Likely, some stronger strombolian-type explosion has occurred at the volcano, whose activity is similar to Stromboli in Italy. –Volcano Discovery
New ESA's images show hundreds of individual lava flows frozen in time on the flanks of Olympus Mons, the largest volcano on Mars and largest known in the Solar System.
Olympus Mons is 624 km (374 mi) in diameter, 25 km (16 mi) high, and is rimmed by a 6 km (4 mi) high scarp. A caldera 80 km (50 mi) wide is located at the summit of Olympus Mons. To compare, the largest volcano on Earth is Mauna Loa. Mauna Loa is 10 km (6.3 mi) high and 120 km (75 mi) across. The volume of Olympus Mons is about 100 times larger than that of Mauna Loa.
It is located between the northwestern edge of the Tharsis region and the eastern edge of Amazonis Planitia and stands about 1,200 km (750 mi) from the other three large Martian volcanoes, collectively called the Tharsis Montes (Arsia Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Ascraeus Mons). The Tharsis Montes are slightly smaller than Olympus Mons.
