Mount St. Helen is a very active volcano classified as a stratovolcano, stratovolcano is basically a tall volcano built up of layer after layer of hard lava, tephra, pumice, and volcanic ash. Mount St. Helens location is in Skamania County in Washington, with coordinates of 46 12'00.
17"N122 11'21. 13"W. Mount St Helen is famous because of its catastrophic eruption on May eighteenth in nineteen eighty. The eruption measured a five on the volcanic explosivity index.
This is an index created by Chris Newell and Steven Self in the year nineteen eighty-two it was designed to try and measure the explosiveness of volcano eruptions to determine the value of the explosivity and qualitative observations ranging from zero to eight, eight being the most powerful eruption. The eruption that took place on May eighteenth claimed unfortunately the lives of fifty-seven people, two hundred and fifty homes, forty-seven bridges, railways, highways, animals, created a crater on its north side, and ash in eleven states.Following the eruption a massive debris avalanche was triggered by an earthquake which it itself rated a five point zero on the Richter scale. This earthquake was said to have happened because of the surge of magma from the earths mantle.
At once the volcanoes elevation was nine thousand six hundred and seventy-seven feet quickly became eight thousand three hundred and sixty-five feet where it is still currently at. Since this eruption Mt. St. Helens has been quiet until a hot spot exploded on July tenth two thousand eight which has since been the last volcanic activity.Some of the other facts this research included on the mountain are how it is rather young, forming within the past four hundred years.
Prior to its major eruption in May the volcano was the fifth largest peak rising five thousand feet. The snow that gives this large beautiful volcano its beautifulness packs itself up to sixteen feet. St. Helen started growing in the Pleistocene during Ape Canyon stage.
The purpose of this article is informative, to let people know facts, predictions, history, and the coming of this powerful and historical volcano.It goes on to explain some of the Europeans to first record the sighting of the mountain which happened May nineteenth seventeen ninety-two during the surveying of the northern Pacific Ocean. It was named by Vancouver for a British diplomat, "1st Baron St. Helens," on October twentieth seventeen ninety-two, but before this local Indians had already named it louwala-clough or smoky mountain. In eighteen twenty-nine Hall J. Kelley led a campaign and planned to rename this mountain and all others after one of the United States president, he had tried to rename Mt.
St. Helen to Mount Washington. As horrible as the explosion in May og nineteen eighty claimed lives the paper says if the explosion had waited just one day later on Monday rather Sunday when all the people were at work such as loggers they believe the death poll would have been much more higher. A second eruption was noted to had occurred on may twenty-fifth, noone was thankfully hurt and a rather popular film was then created named The Eruption of Mount St.
Helen.After all that occurred with the volcano and all it put everyone through president Ronald Reagan in nineteen eighty-two established the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, which still to this day remains a famous natural laboratory for the study of earth processes,nature, and catastrophes. The volcano and the area surrounding still have a long way to go before it recovers and has all the things it had before it erupted, although each day it is working itself back to that way.Researchers in this paper suggest that the volcano is rumbling again and there reasoning behind this suggestion is based on shallow earthquakes that keep occurring from what seems to be from new magma moving into the dome, which has now risen to one hundred and fifty feet, and this action could make it very easy for an eruption. Scientists do believe that however the magma moving is a much less amount.
Some of the tools they said to have used were technology such as "spiders" which were lowered into the volcano by helicopter into hot spots and gives data from inside the volcano as well as above.Spider pods were created to go were humans can not. They also detect earthquakes, infrared to sense volcanic explosions, and is able to search for ash cloud formations. The pods are batterie powered lasting about one year.
Satellites are also a tool used there are two types used for active volcanoes geostationary, and low earth orbit. Seisthometers, seismographs, leveling, tilt, COSPEC, video, and cameras are all tools used in not only observation on Mount St. helens but every other as well.Referencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_St._Helens
