Week 6.1

Question 1

Continental Flood Basalts

Answer 1

Result of massive Super plumes erupting immense amounts of hot basalt onto the Earth’s surface

Question 2

Earths Interior

Answer 2

• Deepest hole is the Kola Well in Russia, 7km deep
• Lithosphere is 100km thick, no physical way of getting rock samples within the Earth

Question 3

Seismic Waves

Answer 3

• Geophysics, detect the interior structure of the Earth, rather physical sample
• Solid = fast wave
• Liquid = slow wave

Question 4

Flood Basalt Eruptions: Laki

Answer 4

• Only Flood Basalt eruption recorded on-land during human history: 1783 Laki, Iceland
• Few-month period, 14.7 km3 of Basaltic magmas through fissures in the ground
• 1 global temp drop

Question 5

Flood Basalt Eruptions: Columbia

Answer 5

• River Plateau, 16 million years ago
• 175,000 km3 of basaltic lavas were erupted
• 12,000X larger then Laki
• 12M of lava over USA

Question 6

Flood Basalt Eruptions: Deccan Traps

Answer 6

• One of the largest volcanic provinces in the world, Western India
• Bulk occurred 65 Mill ago

Question 7

Flood Basalt Eruptions: Siberian Traps

Answer 7

• The Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction is the most devastating loss of life in Earth’s history
• 95% of all marine species, 66% of all land-dwellers were wiped out
• Erupted over 1,500,000 km3 of Basalt, spread over 1.5 million km2 of Eastern Russia