This amazing video is from 2020, but Indonesia’s Mount Ibu is in full swing right now, too, per latest reports.
You’ll want to turn up the volume for this one. A little.
Strombolian eruptions, ladies and gentlemen. Give them a big hand. (I don’t know what volcano is erupting in the distance — probably one of the other four mentioned farther down in the post — but it makes this video even more beautiful.)
That was in 2020.
These days, Ibu is in more of a vulcanian mood.
Per the Global Volcanism Program, which has lots more information on Gunung Ibu (which means “Mother Mountain” in Indonesian):
The truncated summit of Gunung Ibu stratovolcano along the NW coast of Halmahera Island has large nested summit craters. The inner crater, 1 km wide and 400 m deep, has contained several small crater lakes. The 1.2-km-wide outer crater is breached on the N, creating a steep-walled valley. A large cone grew ENE of the summit, and a smaller one to the WSW has fed a lava flow down the W flank. A group of maars is located below the N and W flanks. The first observed and recorded eruption was a small explosion from the summit crater in 1911. Eruptive activity began again in December 1998, producing a lava dome that eventually covered much of the floor of the inner summit crater along with ongoing explosive ash emissions.
According to this source,
Ibu is a 7-km-width stratovolcano with a summit of 1340 m (a.s.l.); it is located on the northwestern part of Halmahera Island, East Indonesia… With Gamkonora, Dukono, Gamalama and Kiebesi, it forms the group of five active volcanoes in the north of Maluku Province. Like many volcanoes in Indonesia, very little is known about Ibu as it is isolated and difficult to access. The long period of dormancy after a single eruption in 1911…associated with well-developed and dense vegetation in its nested craters…did not provide much opportunity for this volcano to be known. But this tranquility ceased on December 31, 1998, when the edifice entered a new phase of volcanic activity marked by recurrent eruptive events and spectacular dome growth…
Mount Ibu certainly isn’t letting in vegetation these days!
But the vegetation will not go away.
This was filmed by the same person, during the same eruptive activity, as the night shots. Volcanoes are awesome, day and night!
And so the eons-long struggle/dance between Geology and Biology goes on and on.
Featured image: Agus Karim (Volcanological Survey of Indonesia) via Wikimedia, public domain.
Flight To Wonder 