Friday Flotsam: the “end” of Eyjafjallajökull, GSA 2010, the new AGU blog network and the Kamchatka update

Merapi has dominated the volcano news this week, but there is some other things to mention!

GSA 2010: Next Sunday through Wednesday I’ll be at the Geological Society of America meeting in Denver – one of the two major annual geology conferences (the other being AGU). I won’t be presenting myself, but my senior research student (Jesslyn Starnes ’11) will be presenting her preliminary findings from her work on Jurassic and Cretaceous rhyolites from the Mineral King area of California. I’ll be trying to blog about the interesting things I hear at the meeting each day, but I’ll be live tweeting any brief tidbits throughout the day. You can follow all that over on the Eruptions twitter feed: @eruptionsblog (and remember, you don’t have be join twitter to check out the feed).

New AGU Geology Blogs: If you’ve missed it, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) launched its own blog network today – and its full of some great geoblogs that I follow, including Jessica Ball’s Magma Cum Laude and Callan Bentley’s Mountain Beltway. Be sure to bookmark the new network (as the geoblogosphere continues its massive reorganization) – and congratulations to AGU for a job very well done.

The “end” of the Eyjafjallajökull Eruption: In all the hubbub about Merapi and the eruptions in Kamchatka, I almost missed that the scientists at the University of Iceland Institute of Earth Science has declared the eruption at Eyjafjallajökull “over”. Ármann Höskuldsson warned that this does not mean that the volcano could resume erupting in the future, but rather that this eruptive period is done. One odd fact in the story: the total ash emitted was ~300-400 million tonnes. {h/t to Jon Frimann}.

Kamchatka Eruptions Update: The situation in Kamchatka has also calmed down as well. Both Shiveluch and Kliuchevskoi has stopped dumping ash over the peninsula for the time being and normal flight operations have resumed. There is some video of the eruptions, including footage of the ash fall and billowing plumes (unclear which volcano it is, though). The NASA Earth Observatory posted images of the twin eruption captured by the MODIS Imaging Spectroradiometer – it shows the plumes from both volcanoes sending ash upwards of 7 km / 25,000 feet.

SI/USGS Volcano Report: Finally, if you feel like you haven’t gotten enough volcano action this week, check out the latest Smithsonian/USGS Global Volcanism Program Weekly Report.

Top left: the ash plumes from Shiveluch and Kliuchevskoi, taken on October 28, 2010. Click here to see the full images and description (courtesy of the NASA Earth Observatory).