It’s Volcano Week 3 here at GSS, which explains why all of our posts over the course of the week are very likely to be volcano related.

Mount Nyiragongo is an active volcano in the Virunga mountain range which runs along the northern border of Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Uganda.

Together with its partner in crime, Mount Nyamuragira, the volcanoes are disproportionally responsible for nearly two-fifths of Africa’s historical volcanic eruptions.

Nyiragongo last erupted in early 2002, when a large river of lava wreaked havoc on Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, destroying 40% of the city. Thanks to early-warning systems the majority of the population were evacuated, however some 120,000 people were made homeless in the devastation.

The Google Earth image of Goma was taken 3 years later, in February 2005. The dried lava flow is still apparent throughout the city including Goma International Airport, where the northern third of the main runway has been obliterated.

Today the airport is still closed to international flights and, as they are cut off from taxiing to the runway, the planes seen here have been trapped at this airport ever since the eruption.

Read more about Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira on Wikipedia and see ground level pictures on the BBC.

Thanks to Jez Robinson.

It’s Volcano Week 3 here at GSS, which explains why all of our posts over the course of the week are very likely to be volcano related.

Mount Tambora is an active volcano on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia, which is noted for the largest and deadliest volcanic eruption in recorded history.

The eruption occurred in 1815, and could allegedly be heard from over 2000 km away. Lasting 5 days, the volcanic activity removed 1500 m of the volcano’s height, sent 2.5 million tons of ash into the air, and left a 7 km wide caldera behind.

The massive amount of extra dust in the atmosphere actually caused the temperature to fall worldwide, and 1816 became known as the Year Without a Summer, when crops and livestock died in much of the northern hemisphere - resulting in the worst famine of the 19th century.

Some 10,000 people are thought to have died directly as a result of the eruption, but factoring in the related famine and disease brings the total to at least 71,000 deaths.

You can read more about Mount Tambora and the Volcanic Explosivity Index on Wikipedia.

Thanks to Tim, Paul Drye, and Pedro Cristian.

It’s Island Week 3 here at GSS, which means we’ll mostly be posting about Islands. It’ll probably last about a week.

The island of Tristan da Cunha and its surrounding archipelago are located in the southern Atlantic ocean, 2816 km from the nearest continent, making it the most remote island in the world!

Tristan da Cunha is a dependency of the British overseas territory Saint Helena, and also a live volcanic island. The main settlement, “Edinburgh of the Seven Seas“¹, had to be temporarily abandoned in 1961 due the volcano erupting.

As Edinburgh of the Seven Seas is 2,400 km from the main settlement on Saint Helena, it chalks up an additional record of the “most remote permanent settlement in the world”.

The other islands in the archipelago include Gough Island, which has a temporary population of 6 South Africans who work at the small weather station…

… and the mysterious sounding Inaccessible Island. Officially uninhabited (presumably for obvious reasons), Inaccessible Island also appears to be inaccessible to high-resolution photography satellites (unlike the rest of the archipelago).

More info on Tristan da Cunha, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas and Saint Helena can be found at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Nico, Tom and Matt.

Spirit Lake sits just North of America’s most famous active volcano, Mount St. Helens¹.

The most catastrophic eruption of Mount St Helens was in May of 1980, which killed 57 people.

A side effect of this eruption was the largest landslide in recorded history when the north face of the mountain collapsed, knocking 400m off its official height in the process.

But I digress, this post is supposed to be about the lake! During the 1980 eruption thousands of trees which had covered the mountainside were ripped up and deposited in Spirit Lake. Today, almost 28 years later, they’re still there.

The Douglas Fir logs are slowly sinking to the bottom, but it’s a very slow process. Interestingly, the Google Earth image is clearly a composite of two different photographs, one of which must be more recent; across the seam you can see the tree carpet is there in the northern photo, but the majority of logs have sunk in the southern photo².

More info on Mount St. Helens and Spirit Lake on Wikipedia.

Thanks to Adrian.

I realise we’ve had quite a few volcanoes this week, but you guys keep submitting them, so here’s just one more. This is the Mount Bromo in the Tenggar caldera, Indonesia, which I think looks fantastic with just one solitary puff of smoke leaking from the crater.

Slightly to the north there’s a lake (which could be an old volcano itself I suppose) which has an odd collection of grid-like objects floating on it. Answers on a postcard please…

Thanks to Arthur van Leeuwen, blouet, Asprine, Alastair Dodd and Tggb3k.

Well that’s all the volcanoes I’m posting today, but if any of this has sparked an interest in things of a geological nature, then despair not. Over at Google Earth Blog you can find out how to pinpoint virtually every volcano on our planet in Google Earth - which I thoroughly recommend trying it out as (apart from the wealth of information included), all of these volcanoes look absolutely awesome in 3D

Furthermore, with today’s Maps update, many of the volcanoes we’ve linked to over the last year are now covered by high-resolution imagery, including Mount Hood, Pacaya, Barcena, Ilamatepec and Hawaii!

This latest update is seriously awesome, so get exploring, and send us your sights!

Thanks to the brand new image update, Google maps’ satellite imagery now covers the Spanish island of Lanzarote in glorious high-resolution imagery - just in time to make this year’s volcano day! Lanzarote is a volcanic island which consists of literally hundreds of volcanoes - far too many for me to point them all out, but here’s some highlights:

Make sure you do scroll around to get a proper feel for the place though. You could even drop by the the tourist trap to watch guides throwing branches into the ground to be set alight by the heat below the surface!

Wait. That was when I was actually there, and not something I saw in these images….

I was on Lanzarote years ago for a family holiday, which seems strange now as the place should probably be nearly inhospitable - a quarter of the island’s surface is covered by lava, of 213 km of coastline only 10 km are sand (much of which I seem to remember was black), and every year the island is whipped by sandstorms which arrive from Africa carrying Saharan sands!

However this does mean that Lanzarote is pretty much the place to go for wind and kite surfing.

Thanks to Amio cajander and Jedi Master Kalimero.

Update: Since posting this 4 hours ago, Mount Oyama has been updated to some jaw-dropping high-resolution imagery. Timing huh!?

This is Mount Oyama on the Japanese island of Miyakejima, which is seen here spouting a rather impressive plume of steam. In August 2000 all the island’s inhabitants were evacuated due to the eruptions which started in July of that year. Described as a “3,000 foot column of steam, smoke, and ash [rising] skyward”, could this be a picture of that eruption?

The islands residents weren’t allowed to return return permanently until February 2005 - nearly 5 years later!

Thanks to Greenek.