Italia Geo9

Italy has nearly 40 volcanoes, and 13 come from the Holocene Epoch, only three of which are considered active ( source ).  These three are Mount Vesuvius, Stromboli, and Mount Etna. All three of these volcanoes are called stratovolcanoes, which are the most dangerous kind.  A Stratovolcano is dangerous because of its potential for an explosive eruption.   A map of the magmatic provinces, including active and quiet volcanoes. Source This map also shows two other active volcanoes: Vulcano and Campi Flegrei.  Their last eruptions were 1890 and 1538, respectively ( source ). Mount Vesuvius is located in the Italian Peninsula Volcanic Provinces and is very famous.  Its eruption in 79 AD killed thousands and buried the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum under ash and mud, which remained that way until the 18th Century ( source ). Image credit: https://seepompeii.com/en/mount-vesuvius/ Stromboli is located in the Aeolian Volcanic Arc and is called t...

  Blog Week #3 Il terremoto…Earthquakes in Italy This week we are talking about earthquakes.  Earthquakes can happen when one tectonic plate moves under another, slides past another, or collides with another. (See my blog from last week.)  This shaking of the earth causes vibrations that can be measured. Usually we refer to the vibrations as seismic activity.  Usually the magnitude of an earthquake is reported and a trusty site that I use for recent earthquakes is from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) website for the latest earthquakes: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/?extent=15.53838,-132.45117&extent=55.77657,-57.48047 . The magnitude can be small or large and is measured, but the main thing to know is that an increase of 1.0 on the magnitude scale is a ten-fold increase.  Generally, according to Michigan Tech , an earthquake that is less than 2.5 on a magnitude scale can be recorded by a seismograph but usually not felt, whereas a ma...

Hi Everyone!  As I mentioned last week, this blog was created for my MPC Geol 9: Earth Catastrophes and Disasters class, and I am blogging about Italy. This week we learned about plate tectonics , which are pieces of the lithosphere that move around due to the plasticity of the mantle layer that is just beneath it.  This plastic layer is called the asthenosphere and it is where the crust begins to melt from the heat in the core.   We also learned about what happens at the boundaries of different plates.  There are three main types of movements, and these vary with the boundary.  For instance, there are oceanic plates that are in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that move away from each other.  This type of movement and boundary is called divergent.   Source: https://www.geologyin.com/2024/03/divergent-boundary-definition-features.html Another type of plate movement is when two plates slide past each other.  This type of plate boundary i...

 Hello and Welcome to my blog! This blog is about...Italia! Image taken from:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Italia_Bandiera.png This blog is for a class I am taking: Geology 9 at Monterey Peninsula College with Dr. Ana Garcia-Garcia.  This week I would like to introduce Italy, tell you why I chose it, and discuss hazards, disasters, and catastrophes.  As the semester progresses, we will delve into the geology of Italy. Italy is a small country in Southern Europe that shares its northern borders with France, Switzerland,  Austria, and Slovenia.  The remainder of Italy is either a peninsula or an island.  Its eastern border is on the Adriatic Sea, its southern border is on the Ionian Sea, and its western border is on the Tyrrhenian Sea which is a portion of the Mediterranean Sea.  The climate in Italy is quite like our climate in the Monterey Bay area.  The country has an area of 301,340 km^2 and a population size of about 59.2 milli...