Nevado del Ruiz

8A2/27/12

Nicolas Hunt

Location• Ruiz is located in Calderas/Tolima, Columbia• In the Cordillera Central, Andes Range• Nevado del Ruiz lies within the Pacific Ring of Fire (convergent boundary)• The composition of the magma has a high viscosity and silica content • Like many other Andrean volcanoes, Nevado del Ruiz is a composite or

stratovolcano• The summit of the volcano has steep slopes inclining from 20 to 30 degrees• The summit is covered by glaciers, in fact Nevado means “snow covered”• In the past when this volcano erupts it sends pyroclastic material out and creates a

lahar most of the time, (a possible reason for the amount of glacier at the summit to decrease over time)

• The capital of Columbia: Bagota is relatively close to Ruiz • Bagota has a population of 7,155,052

Location Diagrams

On the left is all the volcanoes in Cloumbia

Type of Volcano

• Nevado del Ruiz is a composite volcano consisting of hardened lava including volcanic ash

• Composite volcanoes are created by alternate eruptions of pyroclastic material and lava flows

• At the summit of the volcano there are glaciers covering 10 square kilometers of land

• Due to the glaciers a few lahars have been created in the past

Self Created Image of Volcano

• Diagram of Nevado Diagram of Nevado del Ruiz, composite volcano(Scanned)

By Nic

Impact

• The benefits of the volcano include tourist destination, provides a beautiful aspect to the land, and it is home to the mountain tapir and spectacled, both of which are ‘threatened’

• Some major dangers include another lahar, pyroclastic material causing physical damage to buildings, and the possibility of lowering temperatures in a violent eruption

Impact Pictures

1985 lahar

New land forming from magma

Monitoring the Volcano

• What is being used to monitor the volcano cannot be found

• However a few methods that could be used to monitor Ruiz would be a tiltmeter: to measure the slope of the cone, or a seismograph measuring the earthquakes created by volcanoes

• The steeper the measure of the slope the more likely there is to be an eruption

• The more intense and the higher number of earthquakes the more likely there is to be an eruption

Monitoring Method Pictures

Experts taking gas samples (above)

Illustration of tilt and GPS methods (below)

Eruptive History• The first eruptions of Nevado del Ruiz occurred about 1.8 million years ago. Three

primary eruption periods in the history of the volcano have been identified: ancestral, older and present. During the ancestral period between one million to two million years ago, a complex of large stratovolcanoes was created. Between 1.0 million and 0.8 million years ago, they partially collapsed, forming large (5–10 km wide) calderas. During the older period, which lasted from 0.8 million to 0.2 million years ago, a new complex of large stratovolcanoes developed (including Older Ruiz, Tolima, Quindio, and Santa Isabel). Once again explosive summit calderas formed from 0.2 million to 0.15 million years ago.

• On the morning of March 12, 1595, Nevado del Ruiz erupted. The volcano erupted pyroclastic material including lapilli and pumice bombs. Additionally, the eruption created a lahar was created killing more than 600 people

• The worst recorded quake as far as casualties was at Amero on November 13, 1985 killing 23,000 civilians and more than 10,000 animals

• The most recent eruption was in 2008, it was a minor one

Nevado del Ruiz Eruption Pictures

Bibliography

Pics:• http

://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=ruiz+volcano&oe=UTF-8&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=FTJMT634LMWRiQLEqcCTDw&biw=1353&bih=967&sei=FzJMT43TDcibiAL1o_nJDw

• http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=nevado+del+ruiz&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Info:• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevado_del_Ruiz• http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/Nevado.html• http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Colombia/Ruiz/description_er

uption_lahar_1985.html

• http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/hazard/stratoguide/nevadofact.html