Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Understanding the physical behavior of volcanoes
- Chapter 2 Volcano hazards
- Chapter 3 Anticipating volcanic eruptions
- Chapter 4 Volcanoes and the geological cycle
- Chapter 5 Effects of volcanic eruptions on the atmosphere and climate
- Chapter 6 Volcanoes, hydrothermal venting, and the origin of life
- Chapter 7 Volcanism and mass extinctions
- Chapter 8 Effects of modern volcanic eruptions on vegetation
- Chapter 9 Animals and volcanoes: survival and revival
- Chapter 10 Human impacts of volcanoes
- Chapter 11 Volcanoes, geothermal energy, and the environment
- Chapter 12 Volcano-hosted ore deposits
- Chapter 13 Industrial uses of volcanic materials
- Chapter 14 Volcanoes, society, and culture
- Chapter 15 Volcanoes and the economy
- Index
- References
Chapter 9 - Animals and volcanoes: survival and revival
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 November 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chapter 1 Understanding the physical behavior of volcanoes
- Chapter 2 Volcano hazards
- Chapter 3 Anticipating volcanic eruptions
- Chapter 4 Volcanoes and the geological cycle
- Chapter 5 Effects of volcanic eruptions on the atmosphere and climate
- Chapter 6 Volcanoes, hydrothermal venting, and the origin of life
- Chapter 7 Volcanism and mass extinctions
- Chapter 8 Effects of modern volcanic eruptions on vegetation
- Chapter 9 Animals and volcanoes: survival and revival
- Chapter 10 Human impacts of volcanoes
- Chapter 11 Volcanoes, geothermal energy, and the environment
- Chapter 12 Volcano-hosted ore deposits
- Chapter 13 Industrial uses of volcanic materials
- Chapter 14 Volcanoes, society, and culture
- Chapter 15 Volcanoes and the economy
- Index
- References
Summary
Let's take a positive view. The mountain is an emblem of all the forms of wholesale death: the deluge, the great conflagration (sterminator Vesevo, as the great poet was to say), but also of survival, of human persistence. In this instance, nature run amok also makes culture, makes artifacts by murdering, petrifying history. In such disasters there is much to appreciate.
Susan Sontag, The Volcano LoverIntroduction
The vivid memory of a photograph in my grammar-school Latin textbook that showed the body of a dog, cast in a convulsed pose since the Plinian eruption of Vesuvius in antiquity, serves always to remind me that volcanic eruptions can be harmful to the health of animals, ourselves included. It is stating the obvious to allude to the lethal hazards of catastrophic vulcanicity, be they lava, mud or pyroclastic flows, or deep tephra, for living systems. The broader biological interest of vulcanicity is not so much in its lethality as in the statistics of survival and the modes of recolonization in devastated areas. Thus my focus in what follows is on survival and revival of animal communities; survival as a facet of the perennial debate concerning the role of refugia, and revival as part of the little-understood process of primary colonization by animals.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Volcanoes and the Environment , pp. 250 - 272Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
References
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