EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week

Volcán Calbuco Before the Eruption

Volcán Calbuco
Los Lagos Region, Chile

Explanation:  This is the spectacular volcanic landscape of the Andes Mountains of southern Chile, South America.  The main star this week is Volcán Calbuco, a stratovolcano that pierces the sky at an elevation of 6,611 feet (2,015 meters). 
   

I shot the photos for this episode on 31 October 2014.  Little did I suspect that just 5 months later, on 30 April 2015, the volcano would erupt after laying dormant for 42 years.  Tourism was halted, planes were grounded, and airports closed as the massive ash cloud darkened the skies.  Fears rose that the eruption would at least locally devastate agricultural, livestock, and salmon-farming industries of the region.  
  

Located within Llanquihue National Reserve, Volcán Calbuco provides habitat to a variety of plants and animals occurring only in the "southern cone" of southern South America.  

The 2015 eruption apparently contributed to the record-size Antarctic ozone hole.  

  
  
   
Information:
     Ivy, D.J., S. Solomon, D. Kinnison, M.J. Mills, A. Schmidt, and R.R. Neely III.  2017.  The influence of the Calbuco eruption on the 2015 Antarctic ozone hole in a fully coupled chemistry-climate model.  Geophysical Research Letters 44(5):2556-2561.