{"id":3690,"date":"2019-07-16T12:02:10","date_gmt":"2019-07-16T06:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/?p=3690"},"modified":"2019-07-16T12:02:10","modified_gmt":"2019-07-16T06:32:10","slug":"indias-active-volcano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/indias-active-volcano\/","title":{"rendered":"INDIA\u2019S ACTIVE VOLCANO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Relevance: prelims\/mains: G.S paper I: Indian physical Geography,\u00a0<\/strong>Important Geophysical phenomena such as volcanic activity, geographical features and their location.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Barren Island<\/strong>, one of the most easterly of the Andaman Islands, is the only confirmed active volcano in India. The island along with the rest of the Andamans is the the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, and lies some 135 kms northeast of the territory’s capital, Port Blair.<\/p>\n

The Barren Island, about 140 km from Port Blair, is a tourist destination and surrounded by waters ideal for scuba diving and is home to a wide variety of aquatic life. The island is open to visitors, with prior permission, and as the name suggests is uninhabited and devoid of any significant vegetation. It\u2019s the only active volcano along a chain of volcanoes from Sumatra to Myanmar. The 354-metre-high island is the emergent summit of a volcano that rises from a depth of 2,250 m. The small, uninhabited 3-km-wide island contains a roughly 2-km wide caldera (a volcanic crater) with walls 250-350 metres high.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Not dangerous<\/strong><\/p>\n

Historically, the first record of the volcano\u2019s eruption dates back to 1787. It was known to have erupted at least five times over the next 100 years. Then there was silence for a century. In 1991, it spewed so massively that smoke billowed out for about six months. Ever since, there have been eruptions every two-three years, the last in February 2016. All of these recorded eruptions lie on the lowest end of the so-called Volcanic Explosivity Index that ranks volcanoes from 1-8 based on the quantity of volcanic material spewed and the strength with which it does so. The latest eruption was a mere \u20182\u2019 on the scale.<\/p>\n

However, detailed studies have shown that the volcano first erupted 1.6 million years ago and sits on a 106-million-year-old crust. However benign this may seem, the renewed volcanic activity over the past few decades has some scientists worried about the amount of unreleased pressure stored in the continental plates that support the volcano. An eruption in 2005 was linked to the previous year\u2019s Indonesia-Sumatra earthquake that triggered the destructive tsunami that ravaged India\u2019s southern coast.<\/p>\n

In 1991, the volcano\u2019s eruption was catastrophic for several animal species. According to a report from the Geological Survey of India, a scientific team visited Barren Island on April 8-9, 1993, to assess the impact of the 1991 eruption on the distribution, habit, and abundance of fauna. Gas emissions still seemed to be oozing. The eruption reduced the number of bird species and their population. Of the 16 previously reported species, only six were observed, of which the Pied Imperial Pigeon (Ducula bicolor) was the most abundant. A night survey encountered only one rat species (Rattus rattus) and 51 species of insects from eight orders.<\/p>\n

VOLCANO<\/strong><\/p>\n