The Masaya, first connected volcano.
One project, a little crazy, to go implanted more than 80 wireless sensors in the crater of the Masaya, is underway.
General Electric (GE), bringing the project, will certainly improve its image by playing on social networks (Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook Live) and sending to the canvas images of explorer Sam Cossman and former astronaut Scott Parazynski during the preliminary phase of descent into the crater to test connectivity.
The deep objective of this business is not to provide wi-fi to tourists, but to connect the volcano, and give constantly and in real time, data on temperature, atmospheric pressure, gravity and different gases emitted by the Masaya. It's Predix, the cloud platform of GE, that will handle the data analysis.
The challenge is multiple: successfully go down to point zero with a bubbling lake of lava underfoot, put the material supposedly operate at high temperatures, succeed the wi-fi transmission.
If this first test on Masaya is successful, the project could be extended to other volcanoes and used to predict eruptions, and ensure a better protection for populations exposed to such risks.
Sam Cossman and his teammate before the descent into the crater of the Masaya and Scott Parazynski ready to go - Doc. Twitter / GE / Sam Cossman / Scott Parazynski / 05-06.08.2016 - a click to enlarge
The "forgotten" calderas in Ecuador:
The stratovolcano Pululagua is cut by a caldera, 5 km wide, covering 19 km²; it was formed there 2450 years ago, after a series of violent explosive eruptions that lasted 150 to 200 years, and is partially filled by four dacitic lava domes post-caldera, exceeding the board of the crater more than 480 meters.
Other lava domes pre-caldera dot the E,SE and S glanks of Pululagua volcano. The caldera is breached to the west.Another volcano, named Chalupas, located in the south / southeast of the Cotopaxi 60 km from Quito, was an andesitic stratovolcano before its eruptive phase 200,000 years ago, the expulsion of 230 cubic kilometers of magma, primarily as ignimbrites (573 cubic kilometers) spread over 2,000 km² in the Andean valleys, corresponding to an eruption of VEI 7.
Its collapse left a relatively flat structure, with a typical structure of caldera of 15-20 km diameter, occupied in its center by the Quilindaña cone. The edges of the caldera is estimated to be between 3,600 and 4,200 meters a.s.l. And the average floor height to 3,500 meters.
El Chalupas caldera - the Quilindaña the center of the caldera, with Cotopaxi in the background. - Doc. El Comercio
Large eruptions, generating pyroclastic flows have occurred during the late Pleistocene and Holocene. The last activity is attributed to a post-caldera dome in the year 290.
Note that this caldera is inhabited today.
Another volcano, named Chalupas, located in the south / southeast of the Cotopaxi at 60 km from Quito, was an andesitic stratovolcano before its eruptive phase 200,000 years ago, the expulsion of 230 cubic kilometers of magma, primarily as ignimbrites (573 cubic kilometers) spread over 2,000 km² in the Andean valleys, corresponding to an eruption of VEI 7.
Its collapse left a relatively flat structure, with a typical structure of caldera of 15-20 km diameter, occupied in its center by the Quilindaña cone. The edges of the caldera is estimated to be between 3,600 and 4,200 meters a.s.l., and the average floor height to 3,500 meters.
El Chalupas caldera - the Quilindaña in the center of the caldera, with Cotopaxi in the background. - Doc. El Comercio
Ecuador - rhyolitic calderas of the andesitic volcanic belt; the chalupas caldera is at the bottom of the document - dic. in Mothes & al
Discovered by José Manuel Navarro, a Spanish geologist, on 5 February 1980: he noticed that the Quilindaña was in the middle of a huge esplanade.
He found an answer to this riddle by examining the walls of ash and pumice up to sixty meters near Latacunga, to the south of Cotopaxi ... they could only come from the eruption of a huge volcano that overwhelmed the Andean valleys in the ignimbrites.
Theofilos Toulkeridis, a geologist at the Polytechnic School of the Army, noted that because thousands of years of erosion by wind, water and glaciers movements, the volcano at the origin of these ignimbrites could have issued up to 800 cubic kilometers of material ... the size of the eruption must have been enormous, on the order of that which has produced the Campanian ignimbrite (750 cubic kilometers ejected).
Ecuador - location of Quilindaña / N° 65 - According to a IGEPN map - a click on the photo to enlarge.
Map Chalupas caldera, the Quilindaña and Cotopaxi - Doc. in El Comercio especiales - a click on the photo to enlarge.
Ignimbrite deposits, up to 56 meters, from the final eruptive phase of Chalupas volcano, located 31 km SW of the caldera - the scale is given by the man (arrow at the base of the deposit) - Cortesía GEO1 - Theofilos Toulkeridis
- Global Volcanism Program – Pululagua – link
- Chalupas, un super-volcan Ecuatoriano que amenaza a todo el planeta - Theofilos Toulkeridis / Universidad de las Fuerzas Armadas ESPE – link
- El Comercio especiales – El Chalupas, un " supervolcan " poco conocido – Valeria Sorgato – link
- Rhyolitic calderas and centers clustered within the active andesitic belt of Ecuador's Eastern Cordillera – Patricia Mothes & Minard Hall / Instituto Geofisico, Escuela Politecnica Nacional, Quito. - link