Week 37 Volcano Watch

10 September-16 September 2008

New Activity/Unrest:

Bagana, Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea

(September 16, 2008 ) Darwin VAAC analysis of satellite imagery revealed low-level ash plume from Bagana rising to an altitude of 2.4 km a.s.l., drifting SW.

More information and a Geologic Summary of Bagana

Bagana

Latitude: 6°8’24″S, Longitude: 155°11’42″E

Bagana volcano, occupying a remote portion of central Bougainville Island, is one of Melanesia’s youngest and most active volcanoes. Bagana is a massive symmetrical, roughly 1750-m-high lava cone largely constructed by an accumulation of viscous andesitic lava flows. The entire lava cone could have been constructed in about 300 years at its present rate of lava production. Eruptive activity at Bagana is frequent and is characterized by non-explosive effusion of viscous lava that maintains a small lava dome in the summit crater, although explosive activity occasionally producing pyroclastic flows also occurs. Lava flows form dramatic, freshly preserved tongue-shaped lobes up to 50-m-thick with prominent levees that descend the volcano’s flanks on all sides. (Image and caption: Global Volcanic Program. Image may be subject to copyright.)

Map of the Region. Credit: USGS

Ongoing Activity:

• Arenal, Costa Rica
• Chaitén, Southern Chile
• Dukono, Halmahera
• Galeras, Colombia
• Karymsky, Eastern Kamchat
• ka Kilauea, Hawaii (USA)
• Llaima, Central Chile
• Masaya, Nicaragua
• Piton de la Fournaise, Reunion Island
• Rabaul, New Britain
• Santa María, Guatemala
• Semeru, Eastern Java (Indonesia)
• Shiveluch, Central Kamchatka (Russia)
• Soufrière Hills, Montserrat
• Turrialba, Costa Rica
• Ubinas, Perú

The Weekly Volcanic Activity Report is a cooperative project between the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program and the US Geological Survey’s Volcano Hazards Program.

Transition Movement

Moving Toward Low-Energy Communities

Transition areas (towns districts, or islands) are designate places where local grass-roots strive to form a low-energy economy.

In its birth place, the UK, the Transition movement has created 70 Transition Towns. Here in the US, Ketchum, Idaho, is the latest Transition Town, joining Boulder County, Colo., and Sandpoint, Idaho. CSM reported.

Volunteers from Transition Forest Row in East Sussex cut grass and weed around gooseberry bushes in a field loaned to them by a nearby college. (Courtesy of Mike Grenville).  Source: CS Monitor.

Transition Movement appears to be a variation of Intelligent Communities: 286W which was first conceived as solar Clusters by MSRB/CASF in 2004.

Related Links:

• Intelligent Communities: 286W
• 13 things you should know!
• Stop Burning Earth
• Is a Future Possible

• Index of Human Impact on Nature
• Initial Conditions