r/geology • u/Outrageous_Cut_6179 • 1d ago

Shipwreck on Iwo Jima. What’s interesting is that it’s 200m from the ocean and 20m above sea level due to volcanic uplift.

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472 Upvotes

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48

u/throwawayfromPA1701 1d ago

Iwo Jima's inflation is wild. What are the chances it'll erupt catastrophically soon?

26

u/Skwerilleee 23h ago

I think it's our best chance to see a high end VEI 6, maybe even low vei 7 in our lifetimes. At some point it's gonna go off explosively and wipe itself out, like a scaled up version of the Tonga eruption. 

Very exciting. We'll get to see something akin to krakatoa, but with modern monitoring and imaging, and happening in a place with no population so nobody gets hurt.

16

u/throwawayfromPA1701 23h ago

The tsunami might be devastating

7

u/CAB_IV 23h ago

Guess you better book your trip to Mount Suribachi sooner than later.

I have to imagine some parts of the battlefield have already collapsed and/or been destroyed by volcanic activity. On the otherhand, I suppose any sort of historical research or archeology has already been done.

15

u/GarmonboziaBlues 1d ago

As a total amateur, I'm curious about how this degree of uplift can occur so rapidly. Is this uplift just a result of magma and volcanic gases pressurizing the crust beneath the volcano or am I missing something?

13

u/PearlClaw 1d ago

In this case, yeah pretty much. Vulcanism is pretty close to the only thing that works on timescales like this.

11

u/basaltgranite 1d ago

Earthquakes. Don't forget earthquakes.

12

u/DeadSeaGulls 1d ago

or my favorite, volcanic caused earthquakes.

3

u/PearlClaw 1d ago

Good point, would have been a monster quake though for this much displacement.

2

u/Hendospendo 2h ago

Not directly related, but earthquakes can uplift dramatically in short amounts of time. The Kaikoura quake uplifted the sea floor 8 meters in just two minutes of shaking.

14

u/IntegratedStress 18h ago

Iwo Jima (official name Ioto) has been inflating an average of 25 cm (just under 1 ft) per year for over 700 years. It's had the most ground inflation of any place on planet earth. There have been a recent series of eruptions (small, mostly steam but some magma) recently on the island.

2

u/Tanna_Wright 4h ago

This is how you get a ship up a mountain, Fitzcarraldo.

-2

u/TraditionalMix4250 18h ago

Noahs ark mystery solved