Banner
    My Favourite Geological Photo - AW #32
    By Gareth Fabbro | March 6th 2011 11:36 AM | 2 comments | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
    About Gareth

    For those of you who are not geologists, a tuff is a volcanic rock, made up of solidified ash. Hence the pun as my blog title. Actually, my research...

    View Gareth's Profile
    The theme of the latest Accretionary Wedge (a carnival of geoblogs) is “Throw me your ‘favorite geologic picture’ mister”, so here is mine:

    Volcanic bomb on Santorini

    Despite my relatively short career as a geologist, it was a hard choice.  There was a spectacular fault outcrop in Arkitsa, Greece; some impossible-looking resistant beds sticking straight out of the forest near Benés in the Catalan Pyrenees; and the classic 'ripples on a vertical surface' to illustrate tectonic forces, also in the Catalan Pyrenees.  However, I decided on this photo in the end, mainly because now I am a proper volcanologist I felt I should choose a volcano-related picture.

    The photo is from Santorini, and shows a volcanic bomb.  The layer it has impacted into is about 2m thick.  While this is far from the largest bomb on the island, the way it is exposed here really does emphasise the power released when a volcano decides to blow.

    Comments

    Oliver Knevitt
    Sweeeeet! Minor gripe, though Gareth; whats the scale on the photo? As in, has the bomb traveled through all the layers visible in the photo?
    Fitzgabbro
    I would have put a scale had I been able to get over there without dying.  I spent a lot of that trip trying hard not to fall off cliffs...

    The layer I was on about is the homogeneous grey layer the bomb is sat in.  The coarser, more poorly sorted layer above was deposited at the same time as the bomb (and shortly after the pumice layer it is sat in).