Uturuncu volcano

Despite being dormant for hundreds of thousands of years, a “zombie” volcano named Uturuncu in Bolivia has been rumbling in its sleep.

• Since the 1990s, satellite radar and GPS measurements have shown that the ground around Uturuncu is deforming in a sombrero pattern, with a central region of rising ground surrounded by subsidence, or sinking.

• According to a new study published on April 28 in the journal PNAS, the unusual activity is down to the movement of liquid and gas beneath the mountain.

About Uturuncu

• Uturuncu is located in the Andes in southwestern Bolivia. It last erupted around 250,000 years ago.

• Uturuncu is a large, dormant volcano that stands at a height of 19,711 feet above sea level.

• It is a stratovolcano, which are large, steep, and cone-shaped volcanoes built up by many layers (strata) of hardened lava, volcanic ash, and rocks. Stratovolcano eruptions are often explosive because the lava is thick, meaning it traps gas easily. Mount St. Helens and Mount Vesuvius are both stratovolcanoes.

• Uturuncu is known as a “zombie” volcano because of its ongoing, but noneruptive activity.

• Uturuncu sits above an enormous and extremely deep underground reservoir of magma named the Altiplano-Puna Magma Body (APMB), which stretches beneath southern Bolivia, northern Chile, and northern Argentina.

Source: Live Science