Hundreds evacuated in El Salvador as volcanic activity picks up

May 19, 2014

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - More than 1,000 people in El Salvador were evacuated from the area around the simmering Chaparrastique volcano in the east of the Central American country as a precautionary measure against a possible eruption, the government said on Monday.

Around 1,400 people have been moved from their homes since Sunday due to a jump in activity by the volcano, said Armando Vividor, operations chief of the country's emergency services.

The 2,130-meter (6,988-feet) Chaparrastique volcano, which is also known as San Miguel, lies about 140 km (87 miles) east of San Salvador.

It has erupted twice in the past six months. No lives were lost on either occasion.

El Salvador Environment Minister Hernan Rosa Chavez said the volcano was now experiencing higher levels of internal activity than during the first of those two eruptions in December.

(Reporting by Nelson Renteria, editing by G Crosse)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-elsalvador-volcano-20140519,0,3090683.story

-- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Scientists to Examine Volcano's Explosive Energy

Submitted by Brenda McGregor on Mon, 05/19/2014

Mount Saint Helens erupted in 1980 and led to the deadliest and most destructive volcanic event in the history of the United States. After 34 years, scientists are now trying to track the volcano's explosive energy to figure out how Washington's most active volcano works.

Scientists will be using techniques developed by the oil industry to set off explosive charges buried in two dozen 80-fot-deep wells drilled around the mountain. During the stint, researchers will be recording the seismic energy of the explosions on thousands of portable seismometers. These seismometers will be placed by an army of volunteers traveling by car, on foot and on horseback.

This will help researchers understand the details of how molten rock, or magma reach at St. Helens' crater from the area where tectonic plates collide and the magma is created. The area is 60 miles beneath the surface.

"We've been looking at what's beneath the volcano through very fuzzy glasses. This still won't give us anything like 20/20 vision, but it should make things quite a bit clearer", said Seth Moran, a seismicity expert with the U. S. Geological Survey's Cascade Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Washington.

National Science Foundation is the biggest funding institure for the $3 million project, headed by Kenneth Creager, a University of Washington professor of earth and space sciences.

A research team from Rice University, headed by earth science professor Alan Levander, will conduct the explosive research, which will use about $1 million of the total.

Other experiments that are going to be conducted will use enhanced receptors for naturally occurring seismic activity. Also, they will analyze the magnetic and electrical properties of rock deep beneath the volcano. Scientists said that it will play a key role in identifying magma.

http://frenchtribune.com/teneur/1422581-scientists-examine-volcano-s-explosive-energy

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------