Both the West Eifel and East Eifel volcanoes exist due to an underlying hotspot (which just happens to be low intensity). If you look hard enough in the relevant areas, you can find several areas where carbon dioxide is degassing from a lake (creating bubbles) or the ground.
I have to disagree with the hot spot description a bit. Especially when compared to the hawaiian hot spot. This has its root in the lower mantle, possible even at the mantle-core boundary. The active central european volcanic provinces are fed by a thermal anomaly in the upper mantle, an upwelling of part of the asthenosphere likely caused by the subduction of the european lithosphere. This is evident by the volcanic rocks of both WEVF, EEVF, CdP and Eger Graben volcanism showing signs of sharing the same reservoir of a himu mantle source (known as the European Asthenosphere Reservoir or EAR). The main difference is thus that such a small scale plume is more or less geographically locked in place and doesn't show a chain of extinct volcanoes fittingthe movement of the eurasian plate. All the active volcanic regions in central europe also are part of passive rift zones caused by the alpine orogeny. Another distinctive feature to the hawaiian hot spot. The plume itself is not enough to cause the rifting. For the eifel volcanism to occur you have to have a combination of both.
Well yeah, that sort of happened with the Iceland volcano a few years back (not the recent one) that threw ash high into the atmosphere disrupting at least airline traffic for a month.
The A61 Autobahn, which is the main traffic connection from the Dutch North Sea ports to Eastern and Southern Europe, runs right through this region, as does the river Rhine, the Moselle and various railway lines.
You reminded me of something. Also in Germany there is a shale quarry that produced a very rare European primate fossil who lost her life in a CO2 eruption when the quarry was a maar. That was during the eocene so not connected to this field.
I learned in geology class that the hotspot in Germany was (mostly) not enough to penetrate the crust. But it was close and it indeed produced dozens of volcanos at the eges of the Rhine valley.. So the crust thinned to only 5 km and subsided under its own weight, making the river Rhine flow where it does today. Nowadays the hotspot is believed to be under the Dutch town of Maastricht and is fading. It still produces some good thermal bathing in the region, though.
the plume under the eifel was detected in 2001 (Ritter et al., 2001; DOI:10.1016/S0012-821X(01)00226-6). It didn't move that quickly in just 20 years :D
the upper rhine graben was formed by extensional forces/passive rifting caused by the alpine orogeny. The volcanism along the graben shoulders and including the Kaiserstuhl volcanic complex are not connected to a (past) hotspot.
Just a few months ago my friend who studied geology and is crazy about the subject of volcanoes in Europe talked to me that there were some newest articles about research (he didn't send them to me because they were mostly data and some German science talk) that the ground under the Eifel area is rising faster than it was predicted 20 years ago. It's still very slow so it doesn't look like an immediate danger but the pace is getting faster and faster instead of being steady. So who knows - one thing that we can say for sure about volcanoes is that we can't be sure about when it might get active or erupt (e.g. Paricutin, while it warned people with earthquakes, grew unexpectedly and really fast, lately some volcanoes got active in Iceland quite suddenly).
Often went to this region of the Eiffel in my childhood and youth due to relatives and hobbies. Later also was stationed in Gerolstein during my conscript time. They actually mine alot of volcanic stone which there, which seems to beprimarily used for gardening. I suppose you`ll cover the Laacher See volcanoe aswell? It`s the biggest in the Eiffel region I believe.
@@GeologyHub There is far to much vegeation there for someone not explicitly looking for that to notice :D Bitburg is also not exactly within the field.
@@Eruthian They have tunnels in the hills around Geroldstein, wherre they collect the volcanic CO2 to add it to the mineral water which comes there from springs. It is sold all over Germany.
I'd heard of the West Eifel volcanic field, but this is the first time I've seen any info on it. The impression we tend to have is that hotspots and mantle plumes are very rare, whereas in fact they are more common than we think. The fact that this volcanic field has about three thousand years between eruptions might be somewhat disconcerting, though. I don't know how fast the maars and so on erode down, but its a scary thought that your nice little town nestled in a depression that keeps a harsh weather somewhat at bay might well blow said town sky high in the future!
the 3000 years is just a statistical average and has no real meaning how volcanic fields such as this behave. The activity is clustered and you can have eruptions every few hundred years and then a break of multiple 10.000s years.
@@Vulcano7965 yes, you're right, but that makes it even worse. Did the people who first moved into the area to build their homes, villages and towns know the area had a history of volcanic activity, I wonder? There's a very good chance they didn't. Even if they had an inkling, with such long repose times between clusters of eruptions, they might have assumed the volcanoes were dead, when in fact they are still very much active. I guess my point is that people ignorant of the areas geological history moved into what they thpught was an idyllic neighbourhood, utterly unaware that their paradise is, in fact, a sleeping Hell.
i'm not sure they are repeated events, haven't seen overlapping maars. its sorta like a reverse volcanic chain where you have a trail of maars instead of a trail of seamounts from the plate drifting over the hot spot.
@@carolynallisee2463 Not sure what your point is. The current population is well aware they are living on a volcanic field. The biggest hazard is that you can't predict where the next eruption could occur. But there is also a good chance that the next eruption wont damage much infrastructure since the region is sparsely populated and cut by several deep valleys. Any lava flow would be redirected into one of those.
@@michaellesak6912 Not true, there is no clear shifting in age of the volcanic feautures which can be connected to plate movement. The Eifel plume is also not a hotspot. Geology Hub simplified the situation a bit too much here. There are several overlapping volcanic features in the WEVF, but they mostly belong to the same eruption sequence.
I found your page during the hawaiian eruption of 2018. I started following Big Island News when they were uploading daily updates with the eruption happening and then discovered yours shortly after. I love how informative it all is and also how absolutely enthralling your descriptions are!
I lived near to! Is a beautiful place with hot water spots! And aí wrote about how the lava did flow to Cologne using the Rhein River. Thank you for the video! Ah, that's the reason why the water in this area is too carbonated? (Sorry my bad English!)
I actually visited several Maars and cinder cones in the area during a university trip and collected some Olivine in the area (trapped inside trachytic basalt bombs). Pretty interesting area, especially in contrast to the phonolotic ash from the Laacher See eruption (even found some Hauyn cristalls in the Laacher See bombs!).
Is this near where ice sheets collapsed? The olivine and basaltic chemistry suggests continental rifting from ice burden, and hydrothermal weathering from subsurface meltwater transport. On the icesheet edge or rapid cyclic changes this could lead to this kind of activity . Another thing to consider is the high fluidity deep horizontal conduit systems connecting these plumes, to Iceland, and the really big one under Greenland, at around 500km depth. This Carbonate and water rich web at this layer should be reviewed in the light of 1500 and 6000 year D/O and Heinrich cycles, magnetic excursions, and solar Flare cycles that also follow the same periodicity, since we now understand that magnetic flux pipe connection and charged particle exchange have a big part in these volcanic, and climate events and cycles. For example the 536AD D/O two years of darkness, which may have been a minor magnetic excursion, CME, and Volcanism induced combo.
@@jjMcCartan9686 the Answer is yes. Having has a look around the geography and topography: Both the Eifel Maars and Laacher see systems look very much like the result of crustal rifting and hydrothermal weathering progressing to phreatomagmatic processes as ice sheets built up, then destabilised and collapsed. As myself and associates are watching these processes evolving rapidly in Greenland and Antarctica, and we have excellent examples with some 50 to a 100 Vei 7-8 supervolcano events in the last million years all coinciding with glacial maximum to interglacial transition here in NZ, it's fairly easy to connect the dots. We also have good hypothesis on how all the Siberian and Alaskan flashfrozen fauna in the muck layer came about. Hypersaline large scale hydrothermal eruptions around the ice cliff failed ice sheet margins mixed in with ice debris and mud in gigantic outburst floods as continental ice sheets blew up into a thawed Arctic basin, decompressing the deep aquifers. This also relates to the Quickclay soils that liquify and cause disastrous landslide events in Sweden. A little salt and they are solid. As the salt is lost through fresh surface water diffusing down, they reach a point where the smallest vibrations cause them to suddenly liquify. Obviously the result of such deposits.
@@Vulcano7965 why thank you, 🤔🤭I think. The rubble impregnated with muck mud and 12 thousand year old Mammoths in the permafrost has t s mystery for thousands of year's! Meat industry experts have always sworn that they'd have to have been flash frozen at -25C to be so fresh that they bleed when you cuts them, grass in their mouths, feed em to the huskies routinely. Hypersaline deep aquifers outburst Lahar with a continental icesheet as shrapnel embedded in it is such an obvious solution.🤭 Oops sorry for the bad pun. Hypersaline solution. On the rocks. Stirred not shaken. Mammoth Martini for the huskies,🤭 ROFL❄️🌋🌊👻☠️❄️👻🐕🥰
also near laacher See "Laccher Lake" is the wolds biggest coldwater gyser. When i was a schoolkid we went there on a field trip. I also leartnt that a eruption in The Eifel coud block the Hole rhein river for month and whoud then sice the nature of the material whoud colapes sending a wall of water down the river destroying evrything in it way like Colon, Düsseldor, Dueisburg and Rotterdam and many towns more
Greetings from Germany! I can still remember when I was much younger my family and I went to the Laacher See and I was scared that the volcano would erupt 😅 You were allowed to swim in the water there back then (I don‘t think it‘s possible anymore) and the water was quite warm because of the whole volcanic activity. There also is a museum about volcanos and earthquakes and stuff and it‘s an amazing scenery. I should go and visit there again sometimes ;) Interesting video, thanks you 👍🏻
I am surprised! My mom was from Germany and even though she was born and grew up in the state of Thüringen which is on the other side of the country, she never mentioned anything about volcanic fields or activity before and I never read anything. Wow! Thanks for the information!
That is because eruptions haven't occured since thousands of years. Therefore, the knowledge of Germany having volcanoes, let alone active ones, is fairly rare even in Germany itself. Also, there aren't many signs of activity in the landscape, just a few cold water geysirs and bubbles in some lakes, but without the knowledge, you might not even relise you are in a volcanically active zone. Sad as Germany has a very interesting volcanologic history. HTH Videography did amazing videos about this.
I grew up in the lead capitol of the world and have always wondered how that areas geology formed with so much lead. Other areas around the world have similar geology with other elements such as coal.
I would have never thought that volcanoes existed in Germany. I've not been in this area, but The town of Gerolstein is nearby and is known for it's carbonated mineral water. I wonder if this close proximity to this volcanic area is responsible for this great tasting mineral water?
Yes it is! Though the bottled water that you can buy today is merely a fabricated reproduction of the taste it once had. It changes of course over time and they reproduce the exact composition so that it always tastes the same
If the eruption of the Laacher Lake repeats today, 1,5 x Mt Pinatubo, that would be a nasty surprise. It probably was so, for our ancient late ice age relatives...
Thank you so much again, I know of the Laacher See maar, but not of the other ones and the extent of the hotspot area. Would you be so kind to make a vlog on the Zuidwal volcano in the Waddenzee (Waddensea) in the north of The Netherlands. It is below sealevel and was found in the 1970ties when drilling for gas. Though little is known about it here in The Netherlands. Thank you!
I'm Belgian and I never knew it was still active! In high school we had some geography classes around geology and even visited Belgium's extinct volcanos, but I'm surprised they didn't give more attention to the Eifel fields, given how close they are to our border. An eruption could definitely disrupt a lot of transport over here too. I'm glad you made a video about it!
lucky for you the dominating wind is W-E Although a prominent tephra marker suspected coming from the WEVF was found in parts of belgium called the Rocourt tephra.
Thank you so much for this video about German volcanoes! As a German, it's very exciting to watch. May I request a video about the extinct Swabian volcano field which is right next to me?
Eifel just makes me think of the gem-grade blue hauyne (hauynite) once mined somewhere there but now not allowed to be mined. I wish I’d bought more than one tiny stone when they were relatively cheap and available. They seem to come from nowhere else.
There's been increasing low level seismic activity in the Eiffel area over the last 2 or 3 years... I follow global EQs, even the really small ones lol, and have for a while now. It's something I noticed a while back so have been following it. I believe there was a recent study completed aswell that suggest there's actually more/faster uplift occuring in the area than expected, it's still miniscule compared to uplift seen in other areas that ware more well-known but the more seismic activity picks up... I'm really curious as to how dormant it really is. There and the Laacher sea area tbh Awesome video as usual!
There been helt a international geodesy conference in Ljubljana 2021. Kreemer&Blewitt presented a report '3D Surface Deformation of Intraplate Europe' including a special closeup on the Eifel. euref . eu / symposia / 2021Online-from-Ljubljana / 05-01-Kreemer. pdf delete the blanks in the link
There used to be another very big volcanic area in germany, the swabian volcano. It's long gone already except for the pipes in the high plateau. The plateau slowly eroded away except for those pipes and the ground around that. And now theres several cone mountains looking out of the ground by sometimes 400m
Maybe you want to do a Video about the "Nördlinger Ries" in germany aswell? It's a huuge meteor crater which a lot of people don't know. Nice Video as always! Edit: nmv you already did
@@bigrooster6893 I've never had a hard time hearing him either. But in this video the reception, timbre, and overall equalization sounds more clear on my speakers leading me to believe it's a new microphone set up
@@kinexkid - Sounded different to me as well, but I thought perhaps he was intentionally changing his (rather distinctive) prosody a bit, in an attempt to sound a little less robotic. But now that I think of it, the timbre did also sound different.
Great Video as Always! I've lived my childhood in Germany, and I was impressed to know in the last years that there's a active volcano in Germany. I've been watching some documentaries in the Deutsche Welle channel about these volcanos and I was also waiting that maybe you would talk about it soon a later. I was wondering if you will talk about Brazil, and if there's any Active Volcanic Field and etc there?
02:12 Many of the Maars are not phreatic in origin but indeed phreato-magmatic. As seen in their deposits largely dominated by volcanic components. Indeed, they are also a precursery feature as seen in 03:02. Here the Strohner Märchen (labeled here as "Strohner" for some reason) is a small maar crater, later followed by a strombolian phase which built up the cinder cone to its north. They can even occur as a late stage. Right to the south of this location you have the "Wartgesberg" cinder cone at the town of Strohn. It was composed of at least three vents building up the volcano. The latest stage was a Maar eruption (Sprinker Maar) right to its south, covering the slopes with tuff. I was in there (which is now a quarry) just last weekend. There is little to no soil build up between the layers, so the entire eruptive sequence happened during one event, lasting maybe a couple of months.
Also interested where you read that the Pulvermaar is that young (and also: please don't use BC/AD. BP is sufficient and least confusing). In any other source I read ages of at least 20 ka ((Lorenz and Zimanowski, 2000; Zöller et al., 2009), some position ot at least between 16 - 11 ka (diss. Lange 2018; Eichhorn et al., 2017) based on absent tephra in paleosediments of a nearby lake and some claim even older ages of ~75ka based on tephra stratigraphy of the Rocourt Tephra (Förster et al., 2019).
Im surprised its rated so low seeing as there are people living in and around them. That area also sounds perfect for geothermal power plants, and wondering if that technology could reduce the explosion frequency. It could be an interesting experiment if that idea worked.
It should also be noted that there was at least one circular structure in Germany that was not caused by volcanic eruptions but instead was caused by an asteroid strike.
Thank you for this video. Can you make a video sometime about the zuidwalvulkaan just above Texel in the Netherlands? You explain everything very well.
I am surprised you did not mention Laacher See, a VEI 6 eruption in the area only 13.000 years ago. The vulcanic ashes of this eruption can be found in a large part of Europe and are an important reference layer for dating geologic and archaeologic features.
German here. Even most Germans dont know that the Eiffel is a more or less dormant volcano. But because one barely can see more than a few bubbles rising up in some lakes there, this is not very suprising.
@ Geology Hub. Thank you for such an educational channel on a broad variety of aspects, and a huge thank you for the time spent on the details. I will NEVER get bored from your videos. I hope one of these days I will have the ability to make a donation, but until then I can only be a dedicated viewer. With that being said, I always look forward to new subjects and absolutely love EVERYTHING you put out for us to learn.
That’s not very far from where I live. I really didn’t know that. I was aware, due to some extinct calderas in my „neighborhood“, that Germany was active at some point, but not that it’s still. Thanks for this✌️
This channel really ought to be called volcanology hub. Every video so far has been about volcanoes. If I could request a topic. It would be about the Maximal extent and retreat Of alpine glaciers during the Pleistocene Ice Age end the landforms Dave created
They know they live in a maar crater. In some of these Eifel regions you are even not allowed to build a new cellar or enter an old one because of deadly gases that accumulate. I live about 10 km from there and some of my family still live there.
I guess what I need now is a map of all the hot spots. One and Two would be Hawaii and Yellowstone, but learning more and more about other hotspots, eg, Galapagos Islands, Bermuda and now this one. I'm presuming this area in Germany is otherwise fairly stable terrain. Of course, southern Europe has volcanoes because of the African continent sliding into and under Europe so it more a product of plate tectonics than being some hot plume in the earth's mantle. My real question is are there a lot of these that just haven't been popularized?
There is an arc of volcanic regions from France via Germany to the Czech Republic, caused by shear forces related to the mentioned plate tectonics and the orogenesis of the alps. The Eifel should be part of this, not only a hot spot, as it is directly in in its path.
3:15 "Before the next eruption occurs, a number of warning sings will be present". . . That's one possibility! OR it can just go "BOOM!!!" without much warning!
It makes sense as many cities that have Bad in the beginning of their names have hot springs that bring hot water into baths. I had been to a few especially beautiful was one near Fulda.
Visited Maria Laach and several other Maars. Beautiful region to hike. A few years ago, I’ve read about signs that there was increased activity near the river Rine. Do you know more about that?
03:03 Ok I get where you have the ages for the Pulvermaar and Strohner Märchen-Römerberg. The smithsonian global volcanism program doesn't give a source for their claim so I would be very careful to use those ages! The youngest feature of the entire East and West eifel volcanic field is the Ulmener Maar. Pulvermaar and Römerberg are older at around 20 ka BP, possibly even older.
Hi could you do a vid on mt peaktu in N Korea please. I know info is sketchy on this volcano at best but it is very active and possibly been woke up by underground nuclear testing activity not too far away. Thankyou
Yes, tons in the Eger Graben. The Vogtland experiences eartquake swarms every couple of years, caused by the degassing of underplated magma in the area.
Hey man! Great content, and I really like the videos. However, I would just like to offer you one piece of advice regarding your narration, since I have studied many orators over the years. Watch for how you draw out the final words in each sentence; you are slowing down your rate of speech and decreasing your timbre almost every line. Speed up your rate, and watch your timbre, and you’ll be statistically more successful, which I hope for!!! Good luck!
Hello from Germany, Nearby the Lacher See, at the Rhine are also fumerolles. I'm asking me, if an vulcanic explosion could occour under the Rhine Rift itself. And another question is also to clear, could a pyroclastique flow build a nature Damm through thé Rhine Valley and hold Back the water, so it couldn't reach the Northsea? That flood would bé catastrophic. And in the direction of the Alps there are nuclear power plants. The Eifel is extremly dangerous. Sorry for my English.
Any comments on today's recent earthquakes on the southwestern flank of Mauna Kea? Farther west that nearly all of the recent activity. Does it portend the potential of concern for the western portion of the Big Island?
Could you talk about the lake(s) that has CO2 bubbling into to the bottom and dissolves into the water? As I understand, the water is so cold that it stays at the bottom. At some point, the water with the dissolved gas bubbles to the surface of the lake in a massive rush and the CO2 kills people and animals near by. Thanks
These volcano's should be classed as dormant. There's no activity there now, but it is believed conditions well below the surface... have the potential to cause another eruption one day. More than likely though, German volcano's will never erupt again
If you watch older videos of his, he states that an active volcano is when an area had an eruption of some sort of atleast around 10,000 years old or less. Of which, both West and East Eifel volcanic field has eruptions that had happened inside the 10,000 years old mark. There is still a good chance that the underlying hotspot is still active and an eruption is still possible, all that CO2 degassing and cold water Geysers around that area are indications.
There is no reason to belive that the volcanic field will *never* experience another eruption. dormant periodes there can last easily >>10.000 years, sometimes even longer. And the mantle plume feeding the volcanism is still there.
