Parker (volcano)

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Parker
Lake Holon.jpg
height 1824  m
location Mindanao Island , Philippines
Coordinates 6 ° 6 '51 "  N , 124 ° 53' 23"  E Coordinates: 6 ° 6 '51 "  N , 124 ° 53' 23"  E
Parker (volcano) (Philippines)
Parker (volcano)
Type Stratovolcano
rock Andesite
Last eruption 1641
f6

The Parker - stratovolcano , the local population under the name Falen known is a 1828  m high mountain on the Philippines . The mountain was not given its name, which is unusual for the Philippines, until the 20th century during the American occupation of the Philippines. It was named after the US General Frank Parker, who, together with Captain Russell Maughan, mapped Mindanao on behalf of the US Army Map Service in the 1930s.

geography

The mountain, which is covered with low vegetation , is located near the southern tip of the island of Mindanao in the province of South Cotabato , in the Daguma Mountains and overlooks the Sarangani Bay . The city of General Santos City is about 30 kilometers east of the volcano. The summit is dominated by a caldera up to 2.9 kilometers in size , in the center of which is now Lake Maughan . The edge of the caldera is between 200 and 500 meters above the water level of the lake. In the northwest of the caldera, the lake flows into the Gao River, a tributary of the Alah River. The lake is thus located in the water catchment area of the Rio Grande de Mindanao .

Hazard potential

The Parker is classified as a volcano with high hazard potential. In contrast to the other volcanoes of Mindanao, it is located in the north of the Sangihe volcanic arc and is the only volcano on the island that has a pronounced, large summit caldera. This suggests an explosive type of eruption, a Plinian eruption . Large amounts of ejecta from recent eruptions lie on its flanks. Surveys of the area revealed that Parker's previous eruptions devastated the area around the volcano up to a distance of 20 kilometers; it thus shows parallels to the eruption of the Pinatubo on Luzon in 1991. It was also found that the Parker had three major eruptions in the past 3,800 years, two of them in the past 600 years. Another danger arises from the crater lake, as became apparent on September 6, 1995 when a tidal wave killed over 60 people. The tidal wave was triggered by landslides that had temporarily dammed the course of the Alah River. There may also have been landslides in the lake. In 2002, a severe earthquake with a magnitude of 7.5 on the Richter scale occurred in the Parker area , and the mountain has received increased attention from the authorities ever since.

1641 eruption

The Parker was largely unknown to most volcanologists until recently. Recent studies of the geological structure, oral traditions of the locals and Spanish documents from this period revealed that it was the starting point of the great eruption of January 3rd and 4th, 1641. Spanish sources say that the eruption was audible as far as Zamboanga City and was perceived in the city as the thunder of muskets and cannons on the evening of January 3rd . The main eruption of the Parker probably took place on January 4th at around 9 a.m. Spanish chroniclers report the increasing volume of the cannon thunder and that it was initially assumed that it could have come from Dutch galleons . Travelers from Southeast Asia later reported that the eruption on January 4, 1641 was audible as far as Vietnam and Cambodia , i.e. within a radius of almost 1,800 kilometers. On the afternoon of January 4th, a thick ash cloud covered the sky over Zamboanga, so that after 4 p.m. people could no longer see their hands in front of their eyes.

A small flotilla, which had set out for Ternate , reached Cape San Augustin at the exit of the Gulf of Davao to the Pacific Ocean at around 10 a.m. on January 4th . The crews stated that at this point in time the sky over the Celebes Sea had darkened to such an extent that the crews could no longer make out anything on land. They drove through a thick ash deposit and set the position lights to prevent the ships from colliding. The sailors believed that Judgment Day had come.

The Spanish chronicler and Jesuit Magisa assumed that the volcano was near Cape San Augustin, but reported that the ship's crews assumed a volcanic eruption on an island of Sanguil . It was only in 1860 that the French geologist Alexis Perrey equated Sanguil with the island of Sangihe in what is now Indonesia and named the then known Awu volcano as the starting point of the eruption. The accounts speak of Sanguil , Sangil , Sanguir or Sanguiz and in the 17th century these terms were used to refer to what is now the Sarangani region and the islands of Balut and Sarangani . The Balut volcano is still called Mount Sanguil by the locals today.

The French naturalist Guillaume Le Gentil wrote in A Voyage in the Indian Ocean (1779–1781) of his stay in the Philippines. Gentil reports of a large volcanic eruption in January 1640, which was alarmingly loud and devastated the country over a large area. According to him, the island was in darkness for weeks and areas far away such as Manila and Borneo were also affected. He explained that the volcano was about 250 kilometers from Zamboanga, in the rulership of the Rajah of Buayan . After the eruption, a lake with milky white water formed at the foot of the volcano. It is known today that this report describes the great eruption of 1641.

An indigenous oral tradition relates that a long time ago a torrent swept the land, destroying and burning the forest, and leaving a lake of fire. The raging current carried the trees away and the sea smelled of burning sulfur.

During the great eruption, large parts of Mindanao Island were shrouded in complete darkness by a large cloud of ash. The ashfall from the great eruption also reached the islands of Cebu and Panay in the north and Jolo in the southwest. The investigations revealed the history of the great eruption of 1641, in which the current caldera formed on the mountain top. It is believed that the Parker reached an altitude of over 2,000  m before the eruption . The volcano blasted away the summit region and erupted large amounts of molten rock, which caused voluminous pyroclastic clouds and large lahars on the mountain flanks to race down to the valley. It is believed that the eruption was possibly even larger than that of Pinatubo in 1991; According to the worldwide weather records from this period, there was a small drop in temperature in 1641/42.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Monthly report 9/1995 in the Global Volcanism Program (English, accessed on February 20, 2013).