Mt. Etna

Location: 37.7 ° N, 15.0 ° E, in southern Italy, on the East coast of Sicily.
Elevation: 10,990 feet (3,350 meters)
Why: It's on a big 'ol fault line!

Italy's Fault Line Type: Etna appears to be a Shield volcano because of it's low, broad, dome-shaped mountain.
Past Eruptions/History:

Most recent journal from Mt. Etna:
March 31, 1998: The northeast crater of Etna produced a spectacular lava fountain during the night of March 27-28. This event lasted about two hours. The fountain reached heights of about 1000 to 1200 feet (app. 300-350 meters) above the rim of the vent. Pyrocalstic material fell in and around the crater during the event. Volcanic bombs were thrown hundreds of meters above the crater prior to and during the fountaining. Some of these bombs were thrown as far as 1 kilometer to the south of the vent. The southeastern crater was also extremely active at this time, with Strombolian activity and a lava flow down the southwestern flank of the southeastern crater cone.

March 21, 1998: A new lava flow began moving down the south-southwestern flank of SE Crater yesterday evening; a second lobe spilled down adjacent to this flow early today. These new flows are only a few hundred m long and are similar to flows emplaced on the flanks of SE Crater during recent months. Explosive activity at the intracrater cone is weak; there are no indications of significant activity in the other summit craters. Weather conditions continue to be unstable, with a new cold front due to arrive in the area during the next few days.

Source (http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/current_volcs/etna/etna.html)

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Future Predictions: this volcano could erupt and any moment, but it may lay dormant for many years and we predict the latter.

orty-six eruptions have occured on Mt. Etna in the last two decades, which can describe the frequency of it's magmatic belches. In order to monitor this continual volcanic activity, a permanent monitoring network has been set up on Mt. Etna. It consists of 12 seismic() stations and 9 tilt () stations.

Source (http://www.iiv.ct.cnr.it/poster/etna.htm)

Mt. Etna is one of the largest land continental volcanoes. The base is approximately 36 miles by 24 miles (60 km by 40 km) in area. Etna's oldest lavas are shown on it's lower parts, and some scientists think they erupted 300,000 years ago. Some of them are pillow lava, which contributes to the theory that Etna was once a underwater volcano that grew above sea level. The first eruption recorded that came from Mt. Etna was in 1500 B.C. and has erupted about 190 times since then.

The most catastrophic eruption from Etna was in 1669. Earthquakes began about 20 days before the eruption and wreaked havok on nearby towns. The eruption started on March 11, as a fissure 7 miles long opened up 1 mile from the summit. The nearby town of Catania was destroyed and lava reached the sea on April 23, about 2 months after the earthquakes began!

Mt. Etna has only claimed lives in 7 of it's eruptions. Most of the time, people are visiting the summit and are too close when the eruption occurs. The largest eruption in the past 300 years occured on December 14, 1991 and lasted until March 30, 1993.

Source (http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/img_etna.html
Source (http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/img_etna2.html

See Mt. Etna LIVE! ()
Images

• Permanent Seismic Network: (495x542, 14.8 KB, GIF)
• Tilt Stations: (495x542 ,15.6 KB, GIF)
• View of Mt. Etna from Space: (295x410, 111 KB, GIF)
• View from Mt. Etna: (53.6 KB, 394x600, JPG)
• View into cone: (54.4 KB, 600x397, JPG)
• Lava flowing down the mountain: (64.2 KB, 60x402, JPG)
• Another Lava flow: (53.4 KB, 600x401, JPG)
• Huge Lava Explosion: (26.1 KB, 600x404, JPG)
• Steamy Lava Flow: (29.2 KB, 600x403, JPG)
• Lava Tunnel: (60.6 KB, 395x600, JPG)
• Image from the Live Cam: (12.4 KB, 384x288, JPG)

Internal Links:

• Mt. Etna Movie #1: (514 KB, .MPG Format)
• Mt. Etna Movie #2: (254 KB, .MPG Format)

Movie #1	Movie #2

External Links:

• See Mt. Etna LIVE!:
• Excite Travel: - travel to Mt. Etna.
• Images, movies, maps, and sounds of Mt. Etna:
• Volcano World
  • Download Quicktime Movies of Mt. Etna:

Copyright 1998 Leatherman and Hofker Enterprises