Volcanoes are deadly landforms, when they eject molten rock and ashes it can have devastating consequences. Volcanoes are also important to our planet’s history and they are necessary to life on earth. While useful, the planet has a history of deadly eruptions and we still are at risk. In the United States, we have a super volcano that could erupt and change earth for years or decades. Scientists have ways to predict possible eruptions, but not every circumstance is able to be monitored.
A volcano is a “vent or fissure” (live science) in earth’s crust or a mountain formed by an eruption and accumulation of lava, ash, rock. The earth’s crust is “40-250” miles thick” (live science) and it is broken up into tectonic plates. These plates “float on a layer of magma.” Magma is hot liquid rock (live science). When the earth forms cracks or becomes weak the volcano erupts and magma explodes to the surface. Lava, ash, and mudslides are just a few of the reasons volcanoes can have a devastating and deadly impact to our communities. Volcanoes are also an essential for life to exist. Scientists believe that volcanoes are an important part of our planets history. When volcanoes erupted they “freed carbon dioxide and other gases that were in the ground to form an atmosphere” (planetseed). Volcanoes also form land when lava cools. According to plantseed.com, volcanoes produce fertile lands and are good areas to grow crops. Ash is “rich” in “phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium” (planetseed). Volcanoes are useful for things like “geothermal energy” and they can move products to the surface of the earth like “diamonds” and “gold” (planetseed). In Iceland, they “draw heat from the natural furnaces below ground” and use it for “geothermal energy” (planetseed). How can something so important for our existence threaten life on earth? Volcanoes may have given us things like life, resources, and beautiful land but their potentially deadly eruptions can have devastating consequences to life, crops, and our atmosphere. It is not just the explosion of magma to the earth’s surface that can kill people. When a volcano erupts, plants, people and livestock are killed by “lava, pyroclastic flows, tephra, atmospheric effects, gases, famine, forest fires, earthquakes and tsunamis” (oregonstate). Throughout history, volcanoes have left a trail of death and destruction. In 1783, a volcano in Iceland called “The Laki Volcanic System” erupted for 8 months! The death toll reached, “9,350” people (heritagedaily). The lava was not the reason for all the devastation Laki caused. Deadly gases were “released into the atmosphere consisting of water vapor, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, hydrogen chloride and fluoride” (heritagedaily). The gases created a “cloud” over “Iceland” that created “acid rain, poisoning livestock and the soil” (heritagedaily). Also, in 1816, Mt. Tambora in Indonesia erupted from “April 10th -15th” (heritagedaily). The death toll was “92,000” (heritagedaily)! It also caused “a year without summer” (heritagedaily) because the ash from the eruption lowered temperatures “worldwide” for an entire year. Scientists believe that an additional “100,000” humans may have died from “crop failure” because they could not grow food in cold weather (heritagedaily). More recently, “Indonesia and Japan have both been hit with deadly volcanic eruptions” (inquisitor). The eruption in Japan was so big that it could be seen from “space” (inquisitor). The eruption from Mount Ontake in Japan has a death toll of “55 lives and dozens more are still missing” (inquisitor). At the same time, Indonesia “residents have been battling” the eruption of Mount Sinabung" since October 5th, 2014(inquisitor). Residents in Indonesia are forced to “wear face masks to protect themselves from dangerous ash and smoke in the air” (inquisitor). These are examples of deadly volcanic eruptions in other parts of the world; however, volcanoes are also a threat to the United States.