CompuServe Messages

Hi, Michael– Welcome to the forum! The pros who hang out here may have something to tell you if you keep watching. If we leave you thirsty for more, you might want to try the volcanoes mail-list discussed in INTERN.TXT in this forum's library. Near crustal collisions and hot spots are good places for volcanoes, but so I expect some eruptions also at crustal spreading zones, the mid-oceanic ridges. These are generally undersea, and their eruptions seem milder than other volcanoes and seem not to build as distinct a volcano, so they do not get remarked as much. One theory of dinosaur extinction has it that the massive eruptions that produced the Deccan traps in India killed them off. I do not know how lively that theory is today, but such huge eruptions clearly could have had great environmental effects. I do not know whether it would be greenhouse warming, cooling due to dust, acid rain, or what, but I would just as soon not find out by direct observation. It seems that when a mantle plume arrives at the surface, it often erupts massively like that, then settles down to continue as a relatively ordinary hotspot – the one that produced the Deccan traps is evidently the same one now near Reunion island east of Madagascar. Let us hope no new plumes are about to announce their arrival… –Doug