Mount Vesuvius Case Study

Background: Mount Vesuvius, is located on the west coast of Italy. Currently, Mount Vesuvius is the only active volcano in mainland Europe. Vesuvius is part of the Campanian volcanic arc, which is also known as a line of volcanoes that is formed over a subduction zone created by the convergence of the African and Eurasian plates (Bagley, 2017). Mount Vesuvius is 4,000 feet tall. Livescience.com says what separates Mount Vesuvius from other volcanoes is its “slab window” (Bagley, 2017). A slab window is when the lower part of the subducting slab tears and detaches from the upper part. This causes Vesuvius’ rocks to differ slightly chemically from other rocks erupted from other Campanian volcanoes. Mount Vesuvius’ subduction zone is lengthy and stretches to

All life in the city was burned within seconds. After the first eruption, no one knew there would be another one until they woke up the next morning to severely dark clouds and lighting, which started into flames immediately. The eruption did take place in 79 A.D., many years before major technology was invented so it was hard for people living there to know something this devastating was about to take place. Today, scientists have plenty of technology to help them spot early signs of volcanoes. However, since the volcano has not erupted for 62 years now, volcanologists say that could be a bad sign. Forecasting future eruptions of Vesuvius is an important challenge for volcanologists, as its reawakening could threaten the lives of 700,000 people living near the volcano (Scaillet et al., 2008). They are predicting since it has been resting for so long the volcano could be the worse one yet. Nevertheless, scientists are confident they will be able to decode the warning signs early enough that if a major eruption is sure to happen, they will be able to see it coming months or even years ahead of