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Pinatubo Vs St Helens Case Study

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Mt. Pinatubo and Mt. St. Helens are two powerful volcanoes located in different economical settings. Mt. Pinatubo is located in an LEDC, this country is known as the Philippines. Mt. St. Helens is located in the United States of America. Volcanoes often cause worldwide issues and distress when they erupt causing large economic struggles and battles for people’s lives.

Mt. Pinatubo is located in Botolan in the Philippines. The volcano is on the island of Luzon and erupted in 1991. The exact time that the eruption started was 1:42pm on June 15th 1991. The cause of this volcanic eruption is due to the subduction of the Manila plate, this is a destructive plate boundary. The subduction increases subterranean pressure which gets released through volcanoes, which in this case was Mt. Pinatubo. The eruption was violent and caused lahar, pyroclastic flow and a sulfuric ash cloud that reduced global temperatures by one degree Fahrenheit. (The 1991 Mount Pinatubo Volcanic Eruption) …show more content…

St. Helens is a stratovolcano located in Washington. The major eruption took place on May 18, 1980. This was the first eruption that Mt. St. Helens had experienced in a hundred years. The eruption was caused by a magnitude 5.1 earthquake that struck at 8:32. This earthquake triggered the eruption that blew off a whole side of the volcano. The volcano is created by a destructive plate boundary between the Juan de Fuca boundary and the North American plate boundary. This means it belongs to what is commonly known as the ring of fire.(1980 Cataclysmic Eruption)

Both of these eruptions are by volcanoes caused by destructive plate boundaries. The main cause of eruption for both is due to an increase in subterranean pressure, however Mt. St. Helens was triggered by an earthquake. The earthquake was coincidental to the eruption of Mt. St. Helens as the eruption was after the earthquake. Nonetheless the earthquake did cause the volcano to erupt, however had it not erupted then it would have erupted

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