Mount Erebus
| Mount Erebus | ||
|---|---|---|
 Mount Erebus (2005) |
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| height | 3794 m | |
| location | Ross Island ( Ross Archipelago , Antarctica ) | |
| Dominance | 121 km → Mount Lister | |
| Notch height | 3794 m | |
| Coordinates | 77 ° 31 ′ 37 ″ S , 167 ° 9 ′ 0 ″ E | |
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| Type | Stratovolcano | |
| rock | Phonolite | |
| Age of the rock | Pleistocene to Holocene | |
| Last eruption | 2018 (continued activity since 1972) | |
| First ascent | 1908 by members of the Nimrod expedition | |
| particularities | highest mountain on Ross Island and highest active volcano in Antarctica | |
Mount Erebus is a volcano in Antarctica and the southernmost active volcano on earth. The 3794 m high stratovolcano forms the west side of Ross Island , a volcanic island in the Southern Ocean . Of the island's four volcanoes, Mount Erebus is the tallest and most historically active, and the only one that is still active today. As one of only a few volcanoes on earth, it has a permanent lava lake . In 1979 there was an airplane accident on the northern slope of the volcanic cone, with 257 fatalities .
Discovery story
Covered by glacial ice, the mountain was discovered by Sir James Clark Ross in 1841 and named after the HMS Erebus , the flagship of its two-ship expedition fleet. When the Ross expedition reached the island, they witnessed an eruption of Mount Erebus. This impressive event and its description in the reports shaped the idea of the people of the Antarctic as a place between fire and ice for a long time.
The mountain was first climbed in 1908 by a group of participants in the British Nimrod expedition led by Ernest Shackleton . Among the mountaineers were the well-known Antarctic explorers Douglas Mawson and Edgeworth David (see also first ascent of Mount Erebus ).
geology
Erebus has been active continuously since 1972 and is monitored by a research station. One of the few active lava lakes on earth is located in its crater . The long phases of steady activity are interrupted by moderate, so-called strombolian eruptions, which produce volcanic slag and lava fragments .
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The type of volcanism on Mount Erebus and the rest of the Ross Island volcanoes is known as intraplate volcanism . Its cause is a mantle diapir , a mushroom-shaped bulge of the hot earth's mantle, which appears in the form of a hot spot in the earth's crust and leads to the formation of volcanoes and volcanic islands. The shape of the volcanic peak was shaped by several eruptions and the resulting bowl-shaped craters, the calderas .
The lava produced by Erebus crystallizes into phonolite , a rock that is rich in anorthoclase (alkali feldspar). However, the chemistry of the extracted lava has changed over time. The oldest effusion rocks (volcanic rocks) have an undifferentiated basanic composition and are therefore considerably thinner than the lava that was extracted later. This explains why the base of the Erebus is designed as a broad, gently sloping platform shield.
The relatively more viscous and therefore less flowable phonolithic extraction products of the recent past and the present shaped the tip of the volcano and give it a steeper incline and a curved shape.
At about 3,200 meters above sea level there is a plateau that supports the new apex of the volcanic cone, which consists of the rim of the youngest caldera. This is where the elliptical outer crater is located, extending over an area of 500 by 600 meters and 100 meters deep. Inside there is another crater with a diameter of 250 meters and a depth of around 100 meters. Several smaller eruptions emerge from the lava lake it contains every day.
On the southwestern edge of the island, at the foot of the Erebus, the tongue-shaped Erebus Glacier protrudes 11 to 12 kilometers into Erebus Bay .
The water vapor created by the volcano has formed caves under the ice in which traces of the genetic material of simple life forms have been found.
In May 2010 the astronaut Alexander Gerst received his doctorate from the University of Hamburg with a research thesis on the eruption dynamics of Mount Erebus .
Plane crash
On November 28, 1979, a plane crash occurred on the Erebus, the cause of which is still controversial. Flight 901, an Air New Zealand aerial tour of the Antarctic with 257 people on board, crashed into the lower north slope of the mountain. The plane was completely destroyed, none of the occupants survived the accident.
Web links
- Erebus in the Global Volcanism Program of the Smithsonian Institution (English).
- Mount Erebus Volcano Observatory - General Information. Erebus Volcano Observatory website.
- Skiing the Pacific Ring of Fire and Beyond: Mount Erebus. In: skimountaineer.com. Amar Andalkar (English).
Individual evidence
- ^ Beau Riffenburgh: Nimrod - Ernest Shackleton and the extraordinary history of the South Pole expedition 1907-1909 . Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-8270-0530-2 , pp. 232–238 (translated from English by Sebastian Vogel ).
- ↑ cave creatures. In: SZ.de . September 10, 2017. Retrieved October 10, 2017
- ↑ Alexander Gerst: The First Second of a Strombolian Volcanic Eruption. Dissertation, University of Hamburg, 2010, digitized version