Eruptions

Signs of activity near Mt. Kurikoma, Japan?

Published by

Erik Klemetti

on

Kurikoma, Japan
I am always amazed by the number of volcanoes that show signs of activity every year that I have never heard of before. Case in point is this report of activity near Mr. Kurikoma, on the island of Honshu in Japan. The last known eruptions at Kurikoma were back in 1950, and they seem to be water-magma interactions that produce phreatic explosions – and even beyond this 1950 eruption, there isn’t much information about the eruptive history at Kurikoma.
However, if you look at the report, the activity is actually rather far from the summit of Kurikoma – a full 7 km to the southwest. There are areas of hot springs near the volcano, and this very well could be a sign that some increased amount of volcanic gases are making it to the surface. Now, whether this means that any type of eruption might happen is purely speculative, but Dr. Ueki Tohuku University indicates he doesn’t think it is directly related to Korikuma volcano itself. Just another place to keep an eye on to see where it all leads.

4 responses to “Signs of activity near Mt. Kurikoma, Japan?”

  1. Japan: Kurikoma activity raises questions « The Volcanism Blog

  2. Japan: Kurikoma activity raises questions « The Volcanism Blog

  3. Erik Klemetti

    Huh, I didn’t even think to connect the earthquake over the weekend with this activity. I’ll have to take a look at the details when I can find them to see if maybe the earthquake could have helped facilitate new vents for volcanic gases – or at least brought water closer to a heat source.

  4. Kim

    That’s really interesting. The earthquake this weekend was in the middle of the arc – the epicenter and all the aftershocks (and the strike of the fault implied by the focal mechanism) lie mostly in a gap in the line of volcanoes. (The volcanoes and recent earthquakes plug-ins for Google Earth are amazing.) There are aftershocks on both sides of Kurikoma. I don’t know what’s going to happen there, but it may be a very interesting place to test ideas about interactions between fluids (whether magma or gases) and seismic activity.

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“It’s not far-fetched that almost everywhere in the world where you have volcanoes you have mythologies or new gods being created.”

~ Werner Herzog

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