Yasur Volcano

Updated: Sep 14, 2024 03:23 GMT - refresh

stratovolcano 361 m (1,184 ft)
Tanna Island, Vanuatu, -19.53°S / 169.44°E
Current status: erupting (4 out of 5)

Last update: 4 Sep 2024 (Smithsonian / USGS Weekly Volcanic Activity Report)

Strombolian activity at Yasur volcano

Yasur is the most well known volcanoes of Vanuatu and one of the most active volcanoes in the world. Yasur is known for its spectacular persistent strombolian activity that consists of regular small to violent explosions from one or several vents.

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Typical eruption style: persistent strombolian activity
Yasur volcano eruptions: ongoing since at least AD 1774 (but likely many centuries before)

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Background

Yasur, the best-known and most frequently visited of the Vanuatu volcanoes, has been in more-or-less continuous strombolian and vulcanian activity since Captain Cook observed ash eruptions in 1774. This style of activity may have continued for the past 800 years. Yasur, located at the SE tip of Tanna Island, is a mostly unvegetated 361-m-high pyroclastic cone with a nearly circular, 400-m-wide summit crater. Yasur is largely contained within the small Yenkahe caldera and is the youngest of a group of Holocene volcanic centers constructed over the down-dropped NE flank of the Pleistocene Tukosmeru volcano. The Yenkahe horst is located within the Siwi ring fracture, a 4-km-wide, horseshoe-shaped caldera associated with eruption of the andesitic Siwi pyroclastic sequence. Active tectonism along the Yenkahe horst accompanying eruptions of Yasur has raised Port Resolution harbor more than 20 m during the past century.
(source: Global Volcansim Project)

Yasur Volcano Photos

Exploding lava bubble at an active vent in the crater of Yasur volcano, Vanuatu (Sep 2014) (Photo: Walter Reis)

Crater rim of Yasur volcano, Vanuatu (Sep 2014) (Photo: Walter Reis)

Eruption at Yasur volcano, Vanuatu (Sep 2014) (Photo: Walter Reis)

The erupting crater of Yasur volcano under a moon- and starlit sky. The torch of a distant observer on the opposite rim looks like a second moon. (Photo: Tom Pfeiffer)

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