Manam at the NASA Earth Observatory

Image of the Day for 10 July 2009 is this view of Manam volcano in Papua New Guinea, captured on 28 June 2009 by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) on the NASA Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite:

Manam, an 1807-metre stratovolcano, is one of the most active volcanoes in Papua New Guinea. Prominent in this picture are the valleys that radiate from the volcano’s summit, which channel lava and pyroclastic flows towards the coast. There are two craters at the summit, of which the southernmost has been the most historically active, directing most of its eruptive products down the south-eastern valley (lower right in the NASA image). The undated picture below, from the Global Volcanism Program (the credit is to Wally Johnson, Australia Bureau of Mineral Resources) shows the south-eastern valley incised deeply into the vegetated lower flanks of the volcano:

The island may look small but more than 9000 people originally lived there. They were evacuated when the current eruption of the volcano began in October 2004 – for a very interesting article on the evacuation and its lingering consequences, see ‘The Social Ramifications of Volcanism’ at Dr Erik Klemetti’s Eruptions blog.

[NASA image created by Jesse Allen, using EO-1 ALI data provided courtesy of the NASA EO-1 Team.]