Mount Lokon, a 1578 m stratovolcano (cone-shaped volcano) on the northeastern tip of Sulawesi, Inodnesia, began erupting at about 3.00 pm local time on Saturday 13 September 2014, for the first time since September 2013. The volcano reportedly produced a column of ash reaching 600 m above the summit, as well as raining ash down on several local towns, where people have reported respiratory problems. Local authorities have set up a 2.5 km exclusion zone around the volcano as a precaution.
Eruption on Mount Lokon. RRI.
Lokon is a double volcano located near the eastern tip of the northern arm of Sulawesi, Indonesia. It has two cone-shaped peaks, Lokon to the southwest and Empung 2.2 km to the northeast, with a saddle of volcanic rock separating the two. Of these Lokon is the larger, though it has not erupted in recorded history, whereas the slightly smaller Empung last erupted in the late eighteenth century. Situated on the saddle between the two summits is Tompaluan, a double crater that remains active to the current day.
The Lokon-Empung volcanic complex is located at the southern end of the Sangihe Volcanic arc, where an extension Molucca Sea Plate is being subducted beneath an extension of the Eurasian Plate, sometimes called the Sangihe Plate. As this happens part of the subducting plate is melted by the heat of the Earth's interior, and rises up through the overlying plate as liquid magma, forming volcanoes at the surface. 320(ish) km to the east the Molucca Plate is also being subducted beneath an extension of the Philippine Plate, sometimes called the Halmahera Plate, producing a second chain of volcanoes in the Halmahera Islands. At some point in the future the Molucca Plate will vanish and the two volcanic arcs will meet.
The location of Mount Lokon, Sulawesi. Google Maps.
See also...
Mount Lokon, a volcano close to the tip of Sulawesi's northern arm, erupted suddenly at about 6.30 am local time on Monday 9 September 2013 (about 10.30 pm on Sunday 8 September, GMT)...
On 9 April 2013 the Darwin Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre in Australia reported a 4.3 km ash plume rising from Mount Karangetang, a volcano on Siau Island, one of the Sangihe Islands roughly 130 km north of Sulawesi and 260 km south of Mindanao in the Philippines. The plume drifted about 45 km to the northwest of...
Mount Lokon on northern Sulawesi erupted explosively slightly before 8.00 am local time on Wednesday 20 March 2013 (slightly before midnight on 19 March, GMT), throwing a column of ask 2 km into the sky, according to Badan Nasional Penangulanggan Bencana (Indonesia's Disaster Mitigation Agency). The eruption...
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