The Servicio Nacional de Geología y Minería reported a small eruption on Mount Lascar, an active volcano in the northern Chilean Andes in the Antofagasta Region of Chile, occurring slightly after 9.30 am on Friday 30 October 2015. The eruption produced a plume which rose about 2.5 km above the summit of the volcano (which is 5592 m above sea-level) and drifted to the northeast. This is the first eruption on Mount Lascar since November 2013.
Eruption on Mount Lascar on 30 October 2015. Servicio Nacional de Geología y Minería.
Lascar comprises a group of six overlapping craters on a site that has been active since at least the Late Pleistocene. The largest eruption at the site is thought to have occurred about 26 500 years ago. Most modern eruptions are comparatively small, though an eruption in 1993 caused a pyroclastic flow that reached 8.5 km from the caldera and ashfalls in Buenos Aires.
The approximate location of Mount Lascar. Google Maps.
Like other volcanoes in the Andes, Lascar is fed by the subduction of the Nazca Plate beneath the South American Place along the west coast of the continent. As the Nazca Plate sinks into the Earth it passes under South America, and at the same time is partially melted by the heat and pressure of the planet's interior. More volatile elements in the melted magma to rise up through the overlying South American Plate, fueling the volcanoes of the Andes.
The subduction of the Nazca Plate beneath the South American Plate, and how it causes Earthquakes and volcanoes. Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center.
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