Volcanic Activity Merges Two Islands in Japanese Waters

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Volcanic Activity Merges Two Islands in Japanese Waters

Submitted by Anja Prohaska on Wed, 04/09/2014 - 07:21





Volcanic activity at the Pacific coast of Japan, a few hundred miles south of Tokyo has merged the tiny island with a new neighbor to give birth to the world's newest island, Niijima. The volcano was previously predicted by experts as dormant.


But going exactly opposite to what was expected by the experts, the Niijima kept growing as lava was continuously produced and emerging from the volcano.


The volcano first broke the surface of the Pacific Ocean on November 20, 2013. It then joined the Ogasawara chain of islands in Japanese waters. But the time it reached the end of 2013, the little island had sought increase in its original size by eight times. This chain of islands is also called as the Bonin Islands, located along the western rim of the Pacific 'Ring of Fire'. It is actually a fault line marked by frequent volcanic and seismic activity.


An area little over 1,100 meters across has now been marked together by the conjoined islands. They rise at their highest point some 60 meters above sea level. Lava is still flowing at the southern part of the new land mass and the ash clouds are being continuously emitted by the active volcanic cone.
Fluffy puffs of clouds have also been showed by satellite images taken of the site. Some experts are of the view that these could be signs of an eruption in near future.


Previously, it was believed that the formation of new land mass by underwater volcanoes takes million of years, but formation of Niijima took only few months. It has reminded us that our planet of a dynamic, changing planet.


The merger of the islands started in December and the high activity of the volcano Niiji is still allowing the expansion of the association, said Japanese scientists.

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NASA Image Shows Volcanic Island Has Annexed Its Neighbor

by


April 08, 201412:28 PM ET


An image taken by the Landsat 8 satellite last month shows the new, larger Nishino-shima.


Landsat 8/NASA
There's some new, pristine real estate on the remote Japanese island of Nishino-shima.
Volcanic activity has merged the tiny island with a new neighbor that started to form late last year, creating a single landmass, NASA satellite imagery shows. The island is now a bit more than a half-mile across.

"In November 2013, a seafloor volcano in the western Pacific Ocean spewed enough material to rise above the water line. The new island, or "niijima" in Japanese, sprouted just 500 meters from Nishino-shima, another volcanic island that had last erupted and expanded in 1973–74. Four months later, the new and the old are now one island, and the volcanic eruption shows no sign of abating.

On March 30, 2014, the Operational Land Imager on the Landsat 8 satellite snapped the image above of Nishino-shima, which sits about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) south of Tokyo in the Ogasawara (Bonin) Island chain. NASA says its position is approximately 27°14' North, 140°52' East.
The white outline in the photo shows the extent of the new island on Dec. 30, 2013.
Volcanologist and blogger noted earlier in 2014: "This is a great example of how volcanic islands like this in the Bonin Islands grow over hundreds to thousands of eruptions."
As , the emergence of new islands is not all that uncommon.
In September, for example, a mud volcano erupted off the southern coast of Pakistan, creating an entirely new island there. And off the Scandinavian coast, islands have been steadily popping up for thousands of years.