Geosphere Journal Entry

Geosphere Journal Entry

Indonesia Mud Volcano Still Gushing (March 8, 2010)

In 2006, fountains of mud starting gushing from the ground near the town of Sidoarjo on the island of Java in Indonesia. Four years later, the volcano still spits out massive amounts of mud and smelly hydrogen sulfide gas. It spews 100,000 tons of mud every day, or enough to fill 60 Olympic-sized swimming pools. The mud now covers an area three square miles (seven sq. km) wide and 60 feet (20 m) deep. It's swallowed more than a dozen villages and forced thousands of people to move.

A mud volcano is a cone of mud and clay built from a mix of hot water and underground sediments. The sediments bubble up from rocks deep below the surface heated by Earth's magma. Mud volcanoes can occur naturally when pressure forces mud through fractures in rocks, or when seismic activity liquifies mud or creates new cracks in rock. But geologists say there's nothing natural about the Sidoarjo mud volcano, which is likely the result of gas drilling in a geolocially unstable area. The drilling may have opened new cracks that allowed the hot mud to blast its way to the surface.

At one point, workers dropped hundreds of huge concrete balls into the mud to try to plug the volcano. That effort failed, as the mud just spread out over a wider area. Later, the Indonesian government tried funneling the mud into a nearby river. That didn't work either. At this point, there doesn't appear to be any way to stop the mud.