Mount St Helens Research Paper

Words: 1006
Pages: 5

The volcano I am adopting is Mount St. Helens. Mount St. Helens is a composite volcano. The volcano is located in Washington. It’s most devastating eruption was on May 18, 1980. Both the volcano and the area around it are recovering. This volcano shows how incredible nature can be. Mount St. Helens is a composite volcano, otherwise known as a stratovolcano. Composite volcanoes are steep-sided and made of many layers of volcanic rocks, made of high-viscosity lava, ash, and rock debris. Also, they are made of symmetrical cones built of alternating layers of lava flows, volcanic ash, and other eruption caused materials. There are also craters at the tops with a central vent or a clustered group of vents. The most important part of a composite volcano is a system of tubes or vents …show more content…
Many plate tectonics caused Mount St. Helens to form. Mount St. Helens was formed when the Juan de Fuca plate was pushed beneath the North American plate. The plates had collided forcing the North American plate, which had been forced atop the other plate, to rise higher than the Juan de Fuca plate and form a volcano that would be named Mount St. Helens. This is a convergent plate boundary. This produced the line of volcanoes along the Cascade Mountain Range as well. Mount St. Helens had been formed from the Juan de Fuca and the North American plates. There are many interesting facts about Mount St. Helens. Such facts are: the Cowlitz people called it Lawetla’la while the Klickitat people called it Loowit. During the last 4,000 years, Mount St. Helens has erupted more frequently than any other volcano in the Cascade Range. Most of Mount St. Helens is younger than 3,000 years. U.S. Geological Survey geologists forecasted that Mount St. Helens would erupt again, “possibly before the end of the century.” A magnitude 4.2 earthquake signaled the reawakening of the volcano after 123 years. The largest terrestrial landslide in recorded history reduced the summit by 1,300 feet and