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Aira,
Japan
Aira
Caldera is a gigantic volcanic caldera in the south of the island of Kyushu,
Japan. The caldera was created by a massive eruption, approximately 22,000 years
ago. The major city of Kagoshima, Kagoshima and the 13,000 year old Sakurajima
volcano lies within the caldera. Sakura-jima, one of Japan's most active
volcanoes, is a post-caldera cone of the Aira caldera at the northern half of
Kagoshima Bay. Eruption of voluminous pyroclastic flows accompanied formation of
the 17 x 23 km wide Aira caldera at the eruption 22,000 years ago. Together with
a large pumice fall, these amounted to more than 400 km3 of tephra.
| Country: |
Japan |
| Subregion
Name: |
Kyushu
(Japan) |
| Volcano
Number: |
0802-08= |
| Volcano
Type: |
Stratovolcano |
| Volcano
Status: |
Historical |
| Last
Known Eruption: |
2008 (continuing) |
| Summit
Elevation: |
1117 m |
3,665
feet |
| Latitude: |
31.585°N |
31°35'6"N |
| Longitude: |
130.657°E |
130°39'25"E |
credit: http://worldatlas.com
The active volcano Sakura-Jima on
the island of Kyushu, Japan is shown in the center of this radar image. The
volcano occupies the peninsula in the center of Kagoshima Bay, which was formed
by the explosion and collapse of an ancient predecessor of today's volcano. The
volcano has been in near continuous eruption since 1955. Its explosions of ash
and gas are closely monitored by local authorities due to the proximity of the
city of Kagoshima across a narrow strait from the volcano's center, shown below
and to the left of the central peninsula in this image. City residents have
grown accustomed to clearing ash deposits from sidewalks, cars and buildings
following Sakura-jima's eruptions. The volcano is one of 15 identified by
scientists as potentially hazardous to local populations, as part of the
international "Decade Volcano" program.
The image was acquired by the
Spaceborne Imaging Radar-C/X-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SIR-C/X-SAR) onboard
the space shuttle Endeavour on October 9, 1994. SIR-C/X-SAR, a joint mission of
the German, Italian and the United States space agencies, is part of NASA's
Mission to Planet Earth. The image is centered at 31.6 degrees North latitude
and 130.6 degrees East longitude. North is toward the upper left. The area shown
measures 37.5 kilometers by 46.5 kilometers (23.3 miles by 28.8 miles). The
colors in the image are assigned to different frequencies and polarizations of
the radar as follows: red is L-band vertically transmitted, vertically received;
green is the average of L-band vertically transmitted, vertically received and
C-band vertically transmitted, vertically received; blue is C-band vertically
transmitted, vertically received. Credit:NASA/JPL-Caltech
About 22,000 years ago a series
of large-scale pyroclastic eruptions produced the Aira caldera (20 km x 20 km
wide at the northern end of Kagoshima Bay in southern Kyushu. It started with a
Plinian pumice erution (Osumi pumice fall, 98 km3) followed by
oxidized, fine-grained Tsumaya pyroclastic flow (13 km3), both
erupted from a vent located at the present site of Sakuraijima volano, 8 km
south of the caldera center. After a very short pause, violent explosive
ejection of the basement rock fragments and pumiceous materials occurred at the
central vent, gradually changing itself to a huge eruption column rapidly
collapsing to form the Ito pyroclastic flow about 300 km3 in volume.
The earliest phase produced up to 30-m-thick Kamewarizaka breccia developed
along the caldera rim and charged with basement (lithic) fragments up to 2 m
across. The breccia is a near-vent variety of the bottom concentration zone of
lithics in the Ito deposit. Various textural features and monotonous petrologic
character indicate that the main part of the Ito pyroclastic flow was emplaced
by a simple, short-lived eruptive mechanism. The Aira-Tn ash, a fine-grained
counterpart of the Ito pyroclastic flow, covered a wide area more than 1000 km
from the vent. Evacuation of more than 110 km3 of rhyolitic magma
produced a funnel-shaped collapse structure with the center of the magma chamber
about 10 km deep. Like many other Japanese Quaternary calderas, the Aira caldera
is considered to have formed not by a piston cylinder-type subsidence utilizing
a ring fracture but by coring and high-angle slumping of the wall rocks into a
funnel-shaped central vent. The outline of the caldera was strongly controlled
by the faults bounding the volcano-tectonic graben forming Kagoshima Bay.
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