The Taftan volcano, located in Southeastern Iran, which has been classified as dormant for the last 700,000 years has begun to show signs of life. The 13,000 foot summit has risen around 3.5 inches from Jul. 2023 to May 2024. Considering the age of Taftan, there are a varying number of factors that point to what is causing the newfound activity. A research team from Spain’s Institute of Natural Products and Agrobiology first discovered the uplift, reporting that the potential causes of the sudden changes could be due to gas build-up over the years, with the addition of degassing pathways opening up, enabling the release of pent-up gas emissions.
Michigan Tech is one of the few key institutions specializing in volcanology within the United States. Simon Carn, a Michigan Tech professor within the Geological and Mining Engineering sciences specializing in volcanology, gave insight into the current volcanic activity. “We don’t have a very long record of this one, so we don’t really know what it has done in the past. There’s not much context for these recent measurements. We don’t know if it’s typical for this one or unusual.” Carns’ current research focus is related to remote sensing from satellites to track measurements of a variety of volcanic gases. The research aims to mitigate environmental and health risks due to the release of gases from volcanos.
“It could be magma intrusion, deep magmatic intrusion. Or it could be hydrothermal related, so that’s due to sort of fluids circulating in the volcano and the fluids kind of eroding the interior of the volcano,” said Carn. Though Taftan is in a more remote area, it remains a hazardous area for now. The current findings regarding Taftan emphasize the importance of the current monitoring strategies deployed by research institutions around dormant volcanoes around the globe.
