Integrative Natural History of Mount Vesuvius & the Gulf of Naples, Part 1: Still Life with Stone Pines and Stratovolcano | Campania, Italy
This slide, and the next several in this series were taken on the hazy summer day a shipmate and I drove up to the Vesuvius parking lot and then climbed the trail the rest of the way to the summit.
After a lot of noodling around on Google Earth Street View, I'm convinced that this photo documents our approach to Vesuvius from the south-southeast. We were probably on the main access road to the summit (Via Cifelli), or somewhere else nearby. Consequently, we're facing north-northwest.
Mount Vesuvius is one of a chorus-line of volcanoes, stretching from Tuscany to Sicily, that is sometimes called the Campanian Volcanic Arc. It marks a major plate boundary involving the subducting African Plate and the overriding Eurasian Plate.
This famous fire-mountain, which in AD 79 pyroclastically buried such Imperial Roman communities as Pompeii and Herculaneum, is a classic stratovolcano in that it's composed of alternating layers of lava and ash. Stratovolcanoes are characteristically steep-sided and especially dangerous due to their propensity for erupting explosively and violently.
And they're usually made of felsic or intermediate igneous rock types—rhyolite, andesite, and so forth. But in this respect Vesuvius is somewhat weird, in that its prevailing rock varieties are basaltic tephrite and intermediate phonolite, and intergradations of the two (tephritic phonolite and phonolitic tephrite, believe it or not.) This unusual geochemistry may be the result of there being a slab window—a gap due to breakage in the descending African Plate—that permits mantle-derived magma to rise to the surface.
Vesuvius is in fact a younger stratovolcano nestled within the shattered remnants of an older, known as Mount Somma. From this perspective, the relationship between the two is not apparent, but I'll next post some views of both the Somma caldera rim and Vesuvius' Gran Cono (Large Cone, which is also nicely visible here).
And botanically speaking: in the foreground, and marching up the lava-flow slope, is a forest of Stone Pines (Pinus pinea). The magnificent umbrella crown of the freestanding specimen at left is typical of the species. No other tree has done more to define the Italian landscape.
I also really like the Stone Pine's taxonomic name, which translates to something like "Piney Pine" or "Really Pinelike Pine," with the implication that it is the one member of its genus to which all other members must be compared. However, I'm also partial to the much loftier Eastern White Pine (P. strobus) of my own native land, which has been recorded to grow to over 200 ft (61 m) tall. Earlier today I was sitting across from one growing in a neighboring yard, and I contemplated its architectural majesty and sheer pineyness. But of course I diverge, in my lateral-minded way.
The other photos and descriptions of this series can be found in my Integrative Natural History of Mount Vesuvius & the Gulf of Naples album.
Integrative Natural History of Mount Vesuvius & the Gulf of Naples, Part 1: Still Life with Stone Pines and Stratovolcano | Campania, Italy
This slide, and the next several in this series were taken on the hazy summer day a shipmate and I drove up to the Vesuvius parking lot and then climbed the trail the rest of the way to the summit.
After a lot of noodling around on Google Earth Street View, I'm convinced that this photo documents our approach to Vesuvius from the south-southeast. We were probably on the main access road to the summit (Via Cifelli), or somewhere else nearby. Consequently, we're facing north-northwest.
Mount Vesuvius is one of a chorus-line of volcanoes, stretching from Tuscany to Sicily, that is sometimes called the Campanian Volcanic Arc. It marks a major plate boundary involving the subducting African Plate and the overriding Eurasian Plate.
This famous fire-mountain, which in AD 79 pyroclastically buried such Imperial Roman communities as Pompeii and Herculaneum, is a classic stratovolcano in that it's composed of alternating layers of lava and ash. Stratovolcanoes are characteristically steep-sided and especially dangerous due to their propensity for erupting explosively and violently.
And they're usually made of felsic or intermediate igneous rock types—rhyolite, andesite, and so forth. But in this respect Vesuvius is somewhat weird, in that its prevailing rock varieties are basaltic tephrite and intermediate phonolite, and intergradations of the two (tephritic phonolite and phonolitic tephrite, believe it or not.) This unusual geochemistry may be the result of there being a slab window—a gap due to breakage in the descending African Plate—that permits mantle-derived magma to rise to the surface.
Vesuvius is in fact a younger stratovolcano nestled within the shattered remnants of an older, known as Mount Somma. From this perspective, the relationship between the two is not apparent, but I'll next post some views of both the Somma caldera rim and Vesuvius' Gran Cono (Large Cone, which is also nicely visible here).
And botanically speaking: in the foreground, and marching up the lava-flow slope, is a forest of Stone Pines (Pinus pinea). The magnificent umbrella crown of the freestanding specimen at left is typical of the species. No other tree has done more to define the Italian landscape.
I also really like the Stone Pine's taxonomic name, which translates to something like "Piney Pine" or "Really Pinelike Pine," with the implication that it is the one member of its genus to which all other members must be compared. However, I'm also partial to the much loftier Eastern White Pine (P. strobus) of my own native land, which has been recorded to grow to over 200 ft (61 m) tall. Earlier today I was sitting across from one growing in a neighboring yard, and I contemplated its architectural majesty and sheer pineyness. But of course I diverge, in my lateral-minded way.
The other photos and descriptions of this series can be found in my Integrative Natural History of Mount Vesuvius & the Gulf of Naples album.