Notes on volcanic activity at Fonualei, Tonga

Submarine back-arc lava with arc signature: Fonualei Spreading Center, northeast Lau Basin, Tonga

[1] We present major, volatile, and trace elements for quenched glasses from the Fonualei Spreading Center, a nascent spreading system situated very close to the Tofua Volcanic Arc (20 km at the closest), in the northeast Lau Basin. The glasses are basalts and basaltic andesites and are inferred to have originated from a relatively hot and depleted mantle wedge. The Fonualei Spreading Center sh...

Volcanic Shields on Mercury Identified at Last?

Introduction: Small (<50 km) basaltic shield volcanoes are known on Earth [1], the Moon [2], Mars [3] and Venus [4], but have not hitherto been positively identified on Mercury. A candidate on Mercury suggested by Head et al. on the basis of MESSENGER flyby imagery [5] was subsequently shown not to be a constructional edifice but to be a compound volcanic vent that had acted as a source only fo...

Influence of volcanic activity at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, on earthquake occurrence in the Kaoiki Seismic Zone

[1] The Kaoiki Seismic Zone at Mauna Loa’s east flank is the locus of some of the largest earthquakes on Hawaii. In this paper we examine the link of those earthquakes to volcanic activity at Mauna Loa. We calculate the changes of Coulomb failure stress along the Kaoiki faults for typical volcanic events at Mauna Loa volcano. We simulate the dislocation associated with the 1950 eruption at the ...

Environmental impacts on health from continuous volcanic activity at Yasur (Tanna) and Ambrym, Vanuatu.

Continuous low-level basaltic volcanic activity, from Yasur Volcano in Tanna, and Marum and Benbow vents on Ambrym, occurred for as long as records have been kept in Vanuatu. The potential chronic health implications for the inhabitants of these two areas were investigated in a preliminary environmental sampling program. The focus was particularly on fluoride and other volcanic gas-derived chem...

Kava tonga.