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Volcanoes do n’t maneuver on human timescales . They may go quiet for centuries , only to rumble to life with withering irruption . Their eruptions may last for days or decades , and it ’s often hard to predict in progress how long an event will last .
Officially , volcanologists consider avolcanoactive if it has erupted sometime during theHolocene Epoch , which started 11,700 age ago at the terminal of thelast ice age . A volcano that has n’t erupted in the Holocene is considered extinct .
This geologic - timescale - based distinction is somewhat arbitrary , Ben Kennedy , a volcanologist at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand , told Live Science . volcano do n’t know or care when the Holocene go . But there is a good , physical reason to view a vent extinct after it ’s been quiet for more than 11,000 years , Kennedy said .
That time point is " probably more or less on the same timescale as you could keep a magma bedchamber underground fill with some liquidity in it that could combust , " he say . After so many years , most magma bedchamber and the volcanic bathymetry feeding them will have crystallise into whole rock , he enounce , making them unequal to of volcanic eruption .
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There is an elision , however : very large " supervolcanoes " with giant magma sleeping accommodation . These are often clearly active volcanic system that have n’t erupted in the Holocene . TheYellowstone Caldera , for lesson , has go magma bear out it , stimulate small earthquakes and heating numerous live springs and geysers . But the last alive eruption was 70,000 years ago , according to theU.S. Geological Survey .
" We often call those system of rules ' unsatisfied , ' " Kennedy said . " It ’s stay red-hot , there ’s a little bit of magma there and it ’s doing something . It ’s not needs erupting . "
What are ‘dormant’ volcanoes?
An even fuzzier terminal figure is " inactive . " This wording is more colloquial than scientific , Kennedy state , because dormant could refer to an active vent that is n’t presently erupting but could growl to animation any mo . Or it could refer to a very old volcano that ’s probably never going to erupt again , but has n’t spend the 11,000 - year threshold to prescribed extinction . " I think we use ' dormant ' as that overlap full term , but it ’s not utilitarian , " Kennedy said .
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Many active volcano have tenacious dormant period . Mount St. Helensin Washington , for example , erupted between 1800 and 1857 , then went quiet before dramatically blowing its top in 1980 . The frequently - snowcapped Mount Taranaki in New Zealand has n’t erupted since 1800 but is expected to do so again — the mountain ’s geologic history suggest it feel large eruptions every 500 years or so , with minuscule eruption every 90 years , according to the country’sgeological research institute , GNS Science .
Perhaps one of the most dramatic recent volcanic awakenings occurred in Iceland on the Reykjanes Peninsula beginning in December 2023 . The Sundhnúkur volcanic crater row in western Iceland , which had n’t been participating for 800 eld , short began to open a serial of rift , releasing fiery lava flow . Based on the geological history of the region , volcanologists anticipate that the volcanic systemwill proceed to ignite for hundred .
