Shallow-water coral reef ecosystems, particularly those already impaired by anthropogenic pressures, may be highly sensitive to disturbances from natural catastrophic events, such as volcanic eruptions. Explosive volcanic eruptions expel large quantities of silicate ash particles into the atmosphere, which can disperse across millions of square kilometres and deposit into coral reef ecosystems....

The ecological and geological responses following the May 18, 1980, eruption of Mount St. Helens are all about change: the abrupt changes instigated by geophysical disturbance processes and the rapid and gradual changes of ecological response. The explosive eruption involved an impressive variety of volcanic and hydrologic processes: a massive debris avalanche, a laterally directed blast, mudfl...

a Geological Sciences Department, Brown University, 324 Brook Street, Box 1846, Providence, RI 02912, USA b Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, Carnegie Institution of Washington, 5241 Broad Branch Road, N.W., Washington, DC 20015, USA c The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, 11100 Johns Hopkins Road, Laurel, MD 20723, USA d Environmental Science Department, Lancaster Univers...

The rocky innards of the Earth locally melt to produce magma, which sometimes erupts as cataclysmic explosions. The energy released by these eruptions is matched only by that of large meteorite impacts. Whether large pools of magma generate huge volcanic eruptions, whose volume and duration can have global consequences for humanity, or solidify slowly within the Earth’s crust to form plutons (b...

Major volcanic eruptions in the central North river systems by dispersing through the sea. However, some Island of New Zealand and, in particular, an eruption dated rivers, that were probably severely affected in their at  186, spread ignimbrite and volcanic ashes (tephra) headwaters, have lower elevation and more distant over a broad area, deposition of which caused major tributaries whose c...

The lack of a larger cooling in proxy records of climate change following large volcanic eruptions such as those of Tambora in 1815 and Krakatau in 1883 has long been a puzzle for climatologists. These records, however, may have been biased by enhanced tree growth for several years following each eruption induced by additional diffuse radiation caused by the stratospheric volcanic aerosol cloud...