New Guinea contains all of the confirmed active volcanoes on the Australian continent. But the country of Australia does have one very active volcanic island that belongs to it: Heard Island.
Thank you , I have learnt more about Australia’s volcanic history in the last 6 months than I my entire life and this has just added another chapter to that
If you want some lava flows that few have heard of, look into the Jornada del Muerto volcano in South-Central New Mexico. I've spent a lot of time chasing oryx in there. It's a special place, but go in there on foot in July and you figure out that "Journey of Death" is an apt name for it. If you know anything interesting about it, I'd love to hear.
@@AtarahDerek NM Game and Fish. There were probably others involved, but I wasn't even born when they did. They tear up fences, so ranchers don't like them, but it doesn't seem as though they displace the native wildlife as bad as other foreign species could. And they're delicious. Just don't get too close to them, because they can be mean and they're not the smartest, but they're tough.
@@AtarahDerek To increase large game opportunities for hunters, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish wanted to establish an exotic animal population in an area where there were few species of big game. Several species were considered, including the greater kudu, which turned out to be highly susceptible to cattle diseases and was never released into the wild. The ibex, a member of the goat family from Siberia and Iran, was introduced into the Florida Mountains near Deming, New Mexico. The ibex successfully colonized in that area and has begun to move out of the mountains and into the flats. The African Barbary sheep was introduced on land near Picacho, New Mexico. It too is now well established and has expanded its range. Between 1969 and 1977, 95 oryx were released on White Sands Missile Range and the surrounding areas. Wild oryx were brought from the Kalahari Desert in Africa to an experimental range at Red Rock, New Mexico. Federal law prohibits introducing wild animals from other countries into the wild, so offspring were obtained from these first oryx to introduce onto the missile range.
Earthquake Swarm at the Tanaga and Takwangha volcanos is still ongoing, USGS (Alaska Volcano Observatory) still has Code Orange, no eruption yet. (As of 2:20 PM CDT on 3.14.2023)
Because the volcanic lava and ash is rich in minerals which plant loves. They also retain water longer. Countries which have many volcanoes have rich, bountiful soil because of this reasons.
I’m wondering if you could do a video on human attempts to trigger or alter the course of a volcanic eruption. I studied environmental and atmospheric chemistry as a graduate student and the climate impacts of volcanic gasses/ash being ejected into the upper atmosphere is well documented. The idea of triggering volcanic eruptions to combat climate change usually comes up as a deeply satirical form of geoengineering, but I’m curious if this topic is even discussed among working geologists and volcanologists. I can see some potential benefits to this sort of study when thinking about developing infrastructure to tap into geothermal energy.
That kind of idea is a bit frightening. Sort of like, "we have a drought, lets blow up this dam upstream to solve it" Assuming one could trigger volcanoes, how would you control the level of emissions once you did so. It's not like you can turn the thing on and off at will like you can a stove.
Can we just leave this sort of thing to Mother Nature please? Humans have a bad reputation of messing things up when it comes to playing with natural forces 😐
The climate problem is misunderstood. It's primarily due to that we humans keep on destroying nature instead of restoring it. Take a look at Victor Schauberger's concept of half-cycle and full-cycle (water evaporating from the oceans, precipitating over land and either running back to the ocean fast, or being absorbed in the ground and slowly trickling back). If we were all eating little to no animals, thereby needing roughly 80% less crop area, we could restore forests everywhere, which would soak up trillions of tons of water and CO2, and the climate problem would be gone before 2100, maybe even long before that. Instead, we are burning down the Amazon rainforest, clogging rivers and oceans with plastic, spraying crops with chemicals, catching fish almost to extinction, and mining stuff with little concern for the environment. Triggering minor volcanic eruptions will, at best, cause several "years without a summer", and millions will die from starvation. If we instead of chemical fertilizer used volcanic ash and rock dust to fertilize our crops (like Indonesia does naturally), there would be plenty to eat for everyone, it would all be much more healthy, and nitrate pollution of rivers, lakes and oceans would disappear.
The cooling effect from the ash and SO2 of a really immense eruption only lasts a year or two, so it's not going to save us from climate change. Not to mention that volcanic gases are usually full of CO2 as well, and a volcanic winter would be more destructive to human interests than yet another few years of status quo. You can't release 400 million plus years of sequestered carbon in a century or two and not expect disastrous effects on the climate. Btw, as far as geothermal infrastructure, note that you don't have to dig very far down to reach a temperature close to the annual average. This means that in a climate with hot summers and cold winters, you can save a lot of energy in both heating and cooling by taking advantage of this fact. No proximity to volcanic areas necessary.
How do they estimate the duration of an eruption that lasted decades down to the half month, many millennia later? I would think "about 30 years" or more likely "several decades" would be about the expected best level of precision, but there's a whole lot I don't know about the topic. Interested to learn, however!
Yeah I'm skeptical on the ability to know the timing for any ancient volcanic eruption I mean how could you even check such an estimate? There is a huge variation in the rate of flow of volcanoes over time as well so the odds of it staying at the same flow rate is pretty slim
@@Dragrath1 It comes down to lava taking a certain amount of time to cover an area and flowing over cooled lava in layers and lava tubes. I have some doubts on certain estimates, but the Carrizozo lava field lasted quite some time to move down a rather shallow valley 50 miles and it is why they guesstimate it lasted 30 years. You need to consider the size of the volcanic vent as well. The Laki eruptions were multiple, witnessed and were explosive too and that isn't seen here.
I think pollen is the answer, as it can be used to date things for time of year, but not which year. other estimates probably get it down to how many years though. But specific combinations of pollen might only be available for a very brief period, and the grains can have at least shape survive very well even after being baked and aged, or possibly just from being mixed into associated ash falls. Then just take the time of year from the youngest and the oldest parts of the flow.
Interesting stuff. I'm a Queenslander, so, trying to Google Toomba. Of course, I keep getting results for Toowoomba, which is of course, on top of a large Tertiary basalt flow. I had no idea we had such recent active volcanism here.
Pretty impressive what the difference in eruption styles make. 10km³ of effusively erupted lava creates lava flows 10's of miles long and really not much else, other than small amounts of ash and decent amount of volcanic gas. An explosively erupted VEI 6 covers the nearby landscape in thick sheets of ash, pyroclastic flows travel for miles and favour the paths of least resistance and it may or may not put a several mile wide hole in the ground. It's pretty cool calderas can be formed in two ways, but those two ways have a similar cause. If you remove enough magma from a magma chamber, the overlying rocks sink into it, much like a sinkhole.
The famine caused by the eruption contributed to the unrest that led to the revolution. Watching your family starve after your crops fail tends to increase your ill feeling towards the landowner who took his rent from the little you managed to produce.
Kinda shitty that the public land is unaccessable because its surrounded by private land. The landowners should be forced to at least let a road in to allow access...
The reason they stopped allowing access in the first place was that people had to trek across their property to get to the park, and some folks had accidents and sued the landowners. Blame the Aussie legal system. It's not the landowners responsibility to put in an access road, and obviously they don't want to sell/slice up their property to the government for a road. And it seems the government isn't interested in forcing the issue...
Sorry if I'm nitpicking a little but I'm curious what pronounciation guide you used for Fagradalsfjall. From my understandinging a double-L in Icelandic is pronounced as a soft TL-sound thus Eyjafjatlajökutl or Fagradalsfjatl in the case of Reykjanes volcano. It's been bugging me for a bit so I figured I'd finally ask. Anyhow, great informative video as always.
@@wazaagbreak-head6039 The only reason I'm asking is because it sounds vaguelly like he's following some discredited guide made by some Frenchman, Julien Miquel, who clearly had no idea wtf he was talking about. Besides I've heard him pronounce -fjall pretty much correctly before when he talked about Ejyafjallajökull.
Perhaps you should head over to the “just Icelandic” channel for authentic Icelandic pronunciation and humor. The author knows how difficult Icelandic names are for foreigners and has a very funny, dry subtle sense of humour. Geology hub is simply the best for quantity and range of topic in vulcanism, and a few butchered attempts at speaking Icelandic are to be excused
@@tristanmelling410 I'm mostly just surprised since he's managed to say fjall properly before when talking about Eyja. You can even go back to his old video about Eyja and have a listen and compare to how he pronounces Fagradalsfjall now
GeologyHub, like a couple of other commenters I am puzzled by your evidence for the duration of the eruption. You say 'assuming it was the same rate as Fagradalsfjall it would have taken 31 years 7.5 months' (sorry, not precise quotation), but don't give any further evidence. But is there any reason to think the rate was similar to Fagradalsfjall, rather than say Laki or (probably more likely?) something between the two. Great video though, the first I'd ever heard of any recent volcanism in Australia.
He's not saying that that is how long it actually took, he is giving you a comparison to something recent that we were alive for. We don't know how quickly it erupted exactly, but we know how much material was ejected and we know it was effusive (so relatively slow).
Australia has far more national parks than the tiny island nation of New Zealand. Many more are accessible. Difference is that we weren't so short-sighted that we turned the WHOLE COUNTRY into a sheep farm like you idiots. Some parts are actually protected, unlike New Zealand.
Great Basalt Wall Park protected from what? Being it's pretty rare in Australia, Queensland could make this an educational destination with designated trails and permits and applying modern park management policy. Maybe a local can tell me. Is it protected due to the local First Peoples would deny any trail development for traditional reasons. Or is the protection for the benefit of local wealthy landowners that don't want the plebes wandering about.
No, it's just completely surrounded by private land and there are no access roads to it. The landowners won't allow people to hike across the property to the park because apparently in the past some folks had accidents and sued the landowners.
Does anyone have info on the decision from council / local government? It’s an important geological area for Australia. Access should be permitted. If the council won’t help, it could be possible to restart a friendly conversation with the surrounding land owner. Visiting could agreed with wavers or through application with small donation.
Wow now that's something I didn't know I didn't even know Australia had volcanoes
New Guinea contains all of the confirmed active volcanoes on the Australian continent. But the country of Australia does have one very active volcanic island that belongs to it: Heard Island.
Head over to Ozgeographics if you want to learn more about Australia
Thank you , I have learnt more about Australia’s volcanic history in the last 6 months than I my entire life and this has just added another chapter to that
From the information I found, there's no longer access via private land because of lawsuits the landowner faced after people had accidents.
I am totally going to walk on those lava flows...
I am going there to live, it's my native title lands.
If you want some lava flows that few have heard of, look into the Jornada del Muerto volcano in South-Central New Mexico. I've spent a lot of time chasing oryx in there. It's a special place, but go in there on foot in July and you figure out that "Journey of Death" is an apt name for it. If you know anything interesting about it, I'd love to hear.
Another shield volcano here in NM. It dammed the Rio Grande about 760,000 years ago, but it is worth a look see, but not in July.
There are some interesting old lava flows and basalt columns in Vietnam that are largely unknown as well.
Who released oryx in New Mexico?
@@AtarahDerek NM Game and Fish. There were probably others involved, but I wasn't even born when they did. They tear up fences, so ranchers don't like them, but it doesn't seem as though they displace the native wildlife as bad as other foreign species could. And they're delicious. Just don't get too close to them, because they can be mean and they're not the smartest, but they're tough.
@@AtarahDerek To increase large game opportunities for hunters, the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish wanted to establish an exotic animal population in an area where there were few species of big game. Several species were considered, including the greater kudu, which turned out to be highly susceptible to cattle diseases and was never released into the wild.
The ibex, a member of the goat family from Siberia and Iran, was introduced into the Florida Mountains near Deming, New Mexico. The ibex successfully colonized in that area and has begun to move out of the mountains and into the flats. The African Barbary sheep was introduced on land near Picacho, New Mexico. It too is now well established and has expanded its range.
Between 1969 and 1977, 95 oryx were released on White Sands Missile Range and the surrounding areas. Wild oryx were brought from the Kalahari Desert in Africa to an experimental range at Red Rock, New Mexico. Federal law prohibits introducing wild animals from other countries into the wild, so offspring were obtained from these first oryx to introduce onto the missile range.
Another cool vid. Well done. Really informative.
Awesome video! Can't wait for more!
I wonder if the dark rock in an region with tan rock has an effect on the weather there or downwind.
the far eastern part of the flow can be viewed along the Burdekin River within Dalrymple National Park
Earthquake Swarm at the Tanaga and Takwangha volcanos is still ongoing, USGS (Alaska Volcano Observatory) still has Code Orange, no eruption yet. (As of 2:20 PM CDT on 3.14.2023)
i find it interesting that the vegitation appears to grow significantly better on the lava flows than off, do you know why this is?
Because the volcanic lava and ash is rich in minerals which plant loves. They also retain water longer.
Countries which have many volcanoes have rich, bountiful soil because of this reasons.
So it is a isolated piece of land that people thought, why not make it a park.
I’m wondering if you could do a video on human attempts to trigger or alter the course of a volcanic eruption. I studied environmental and atmospheric chemistry as a graduate student and the climate impacts of volcanic gasses/ash being ejected into the upper atmosphere is well documented. The idea of triggering volcanic eruptions to combat climate change usually comes up as a deeply satirical form of geoengineering, but I’m curious if this topic is even discussed among working geologists and volcanologists. I can see some potential benefits to this sort of study when thinking about developing infrastructure to tap into geothermal energy.
That kind of idea is a bit frightening. Sort of like, "we have a drought, lets blow up this dam upstream to solve it" Assuming one could trigger volcanoes, how would you control the level of emissions once you did so. It's not like you can turn the thing on and off at will like you can a stove.
Can we just leave this sort of thing to Mother Nature please? Humans have a bad reputation of messing things up when it comes to playing with natural forces 😐
The climate problem is misunderstood. It's primarily due to that we humans keep on destroying nature instead of restoring it.
Take a look at Victor Schauberger's concept of half-cycle and full-cycle (water evaporating from the oceans, precipitating over land and either running back to the ocean fast, or being absorbed in the ground and slowly trickling back).
If we were all eating little to no animals, thereby needing roughly 80% less crop area, we could restore forests everywhere, which would soak up trillions of tons of water and CO2, and the climate problem would be gone before 2100, maybe even long before that.
Instead, we are burning down the Amazon rainforest, clogging rivers and oceans with plastic, spraying crops with chemicals, catching fish almost to extinction, and mining stuff with little concern for the environment.
Triggering minor volcanic eruptions will, at best, cause several "years without a summer", and millions will die from starvation.
If we instead of chemical fertilizer used volcanic ash and rock dust to fertilize our crops (like Indonesia does naturally), there would be plenty to eat for everyone, it would all be much more healthy, and nitrate pollution of rivers, lakes and oceans would disappear.
The cooling effect from the ash and SO2 of a really immense eruption only lasts a year or two, so it's not going to save us from climate change. Not to mention that volcanic gases are usually full of CO2 as well, and a volcanic winter would be more destructive to human interests than yet another few years of status quo. You can't release 400 million plus years of sequestered carbon in a century or two and not expect disastrous effects on the climate.
Btw, as far as geothermal infrastructure, note that you don't have to dig very far down to reach a temperature close to the annual average. This means that in a climate with hot summers and cold winters, you can save a lot of energy in both heating and cooling by taking advantage of this fact. No proximity to volcanic areas necessary.
How do they estimate the duration of an eruption that lasted decades down to the half month, many millennia later? I would think "about 30 years" or more likely "several decades" would be about the expected best level of precision, but there's a whole lot I don't know about the topic. Interested to learn, however!
Yeah I'm skeptical on the ability to know the timing for any ancient volcanic eruption I mean how could you even check such an estimate? There is a huge variation in the rate of flow of volcanoes over time as well so the odds of it staying at the same flow rate is pretty slim
@@Dragrath1 It comes down to lava taking a certain amount of time to cover an area and flowing over cooled lava in layers and lava tubes. I have some doubts on certain estimates, but the Carrizozo lava field lasted quite some time to move down a rather shallow valley 50 miles and it is why they guesstimate it lasted 30 years. You need to consider the size of the volcanic vent as well. The Laki eruptions were multiple, witnessed and were explosive too and that isn't seen here.
I think pollen is the answer, as it can be used to date things for time of year, but not which year. other estimates probably get it down to how many years though. But specific combinations of pollen might only be available for a very brief period, and the grains can have at least shape survive very well even after being baked and aged, or possibly just from being mixed into associated ash falls. Then just take the time of year from the youngest and the oldest parts of the flow.
Interesting stuff. I'm a Queenslander, so, trying to Google Toomba. Of course, I keep getting results for Toowoomba, which is of course, on top of a large Tertiary basalt flow.
I had no idea we had such recent active volcanism here.
Toomba is only part of basalt QLD.
A national park no one is allowed to visit? Egad!
Sounds about right for Australia...
Pretty impressive what the difference in eruption styles make. 10km³ of effusively erupted lava creates lava flows 10's of miles long and really not much else, other than small amounts of ash and decent amount of volcanic gas. An explosively erupted VEI 6 covers the nearby landscape in thick sheets of ash, pyroclastic flows travel for miles and favour the paths of least resistance and it may or may not put a several mile wide hole in the ground. It's pretty cool calderas can be formed in two ways, but those two ways have a similar cause. If you remove enough magma from a magma chamber, the overlying rocks sink into it, much like a sinkhole.
The thing that stuck in my mind after listening to this was : "The French revolution was caused by a volcano" ... sorta
The famine caused by the eruption contributed to the unrest that led to the revolution. Watching your family starve after your crops fail tends to increase your ill feeling towards the landowner who took his rent from the little you managed to produce.
I didn't even know there were volcanoes in mainland Australia.
Kinda shitty that the public land is unaccessable because its surrounded by private land. The landowners should be forced to at least let a road in to allow access...
The reason they stopped allowing access in the first place was that people had to trek across their property to get to the park, and some folks had accidents and sued the landowners. Blame the Aussie legal system. It's not the landowners responsibility to put in an access road, and obviously they don't want to sell/slice up their property to the government for a road. And it seems the government isn't interested in forcing the issue...
God I was wandering what that expanse of forest was in Queensland. It seemed so out of place.
Forest? Out of place in Queensland? The state with by far the most forest-even more than any US state?
Forest. Yes. Out of place? Yes. It's in the fucking outback. ZZZZZZZZZZ
@@BlackIndigenousPosse
Sorry if I'm nitpicking a little but I'm curious what pronounciation guide you used for Fagradalsfjall. From my understandinging a double-L in Icelandic is pronounced as a soft TL-sound thus Eyjafjatlajökutl or Fagradalsfjatl in the case of Reykjanes volcano. It's been bugging me for a bit so I figured I'd finally ask.
Anyhow, great informative video as always.
uhm acksually 🤓🤓
@@wazaagbreak-head6039 The only reason I'm asking is because it sounds vaguelly like he's following some discredited guide made by some Frenchman, Julien Miquel, who clearly had no idea wtf he was talking about.
Besides I've heard him pronounce -fjall pretty much correctly before when he talked about Ejyafjallajökull.
Perhaps you should head over to the “just Icelandic” channel for authentic Icelandic pronunciation and humor. The author knows how difficult Icelandic names are for foreigners and has a very funny, dry subtle sense of humour. Geology hub is simply the best for quantity and range of topic in vulcanism, and a few butchered attempts at speaking Icelandic are to be excused
@@tristanmelling410 I'm mostly just surprised since he's managed to say fjall properly before when talking about Eyja. You can even go back to his old video about Eyja and have a listen and compare to how he pronounces Fagradalsfjall now
This is a fascinating geologic puzzle.
So it's a park but not one that can be visited. I'd say not a "park" but "an area". Right? Love your channel and updates!!
Heck yeah. Aussie time!
What about the Neclear Sub , they were expecting ; looks like it wasn't a good idea , not now ; anyway ...
Seems kind of stupid to call it a National "Park" when no one is allowed there.
Australia is just a prison colony
"Park" can refer to any parcel of land held in trust by a government on behalf of the people. If you think of it that way it isn't so strange.
It does seem pointless !:-)
Way to use tax money for the benefit of a few.
@@anthonyj7989 It doesn't matter why there is no public access, it's still stupid to call it a "park" call it a "preserve"
GeologyHub, like a couple of other commenters I am puzzled by your evidence for the duration of the eruption. You say 'assuming it was the same rate as Fagradalsfjall it would have taken 31 years 7.5 months' (sorry, not precise quotation), but don't give any further evidence. But is there any reason to think the rate was similar to Fagradalsfjall, rather than say Laki or (probably more likely?) something between the two.
Great video though, the first I'd ever heard of any recent volcanism in Australia.
He's not saying that that is how long it actually took, he is giving you a comparison to something recent that we were alive for. We don't know how quickly it erupted exactly, but we know how much material was ejected and we know it was effusive (so relatively slow).
I honestly thought Australia had no volcanos… or is it just the only continent to have no active volcanos?
What was the latest eruption in the Aussie mainland? Also... how do they age them?
Mount Gambier, c. 4,500 years ago
Have a look at Tweed Volcano it's one of the world's largest extinct volcanoes.
New Zealand has lots of hiking tracks that cross over private land to reach national parks… That is a bad excuse to not let people visit.
Australia has far more national parks than the tiny island nation of New Zealand. Many more are accessible. Difference is that we weren't so short-sighted that we turned the WHOLE COUNTRY into a sheep farm like you idiots. Some parts are actually protected, unlike New Zealand.
I live in the Victorian volcanic region. The entire area is basically made up of granite, quartz and gold.
Great Basalt Wall Park protected from what? Being it's pretty rare in Australia, Queensland could make this an educational destination with designated trails and permits and applying modern park management policy. Maybe a local can tell me. Is it protected due to the local First Peoples would deny any trail development for traditional reasons. Or is the protection for the benefit of local wealthy landowners that don't want the plebes wandering about.
No, it's just completely surrounded by private land and there are no access roads to it. The landowners won't allow people to hike across the property to the park because apparently in the past some folks had accidents and sued the landowners.
Does anyone have info on the decision from council / local government?
It’s an important geological area for Australia. Access should be permitted.
If the council won’t help, it could be possible to restart a friendly conversation with the surrounding land owner. Visiting could agreed with wavers or through application with small donation.
31 years and 7 and a half months! How do we know that exact?
I don't think you were paying attention when he said that.
13,000 years ago? There's that number again.
👍👍👍
Australia's volcanic past continues to surprise me, it is such a geologically stable and rather flat continent.