Volcano of Fire

Volcán de Colima is a stratovolcano known as the Volcano of Fire. The Colima volcano has erupted several times this month.

Web cam animation of Volcán de Colima eruption

21 January 2015, 9:13AM

Volcán de Colima is in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt which is a series of volcanic mountains that rise from the high plateaus of central-southern Mexico.

Our earth is very old, an old warrior that has lived through many battles. Nevertheless, the face of it is still changing, and science sees no certain limit of time for its stately evolution. Our solid earth, apparently so stable, inert, and finished, is changing, mobile, and still evolving.
— Reginald Aldworth Daly, Our Mobile Earth (1926), 320.

Crater atop Volcán de Colima

Source: Google Maps

Stratovolcanoes like Volcán de Colima are steep conical mountains characterized by periodic explosive eruptions. Stratovolcanoes have conduits that link them to magma reservoirs deep in the Earth's crust.

Strata is from the Latin stratum meaning laid down. Strato-volcanoes are built from alternating layers of hardened lava, tephra, pumice, and ash.

I am here tracing the History of the Earth itself, from its own Monuments.
— Jean André Deluc, Geological Letters Addressed to Professor Blumenbach, 1794


REFERENCES

• Our Mobile Earth, Reginald Aldworth Daly, C. Scribner's Sons, 1926.
• Principal Types of Volcanoes, USGS.
• Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, Wikipedia.
• Volcán de Colima, Wikipedia
• WebCam at Volcán de Colima, Web Cams of Mexico.

Caldera Lakes

A volcanic crater lake forms in a cauldron-like volcanic feature called a caldera. Caldera is a Spanish word from the latin caldaria meaning cooking pot.

A caldera lake is formed in several stages following a cataclysmic volcanic eruption.

Crater Lake is a lake that was formed in a caldera from precipitation and snow melt.

Cataclysmic Eruption

During a cataclysmic eruption (below), a fast-moving column of ash, hot gas, and rock escapes from a subsurface magma chamber blasting up through the ground surface and spewing into the atmosphere. As subsurface materials are transported and displaced to the surface, the volume of the magma chamber decreases.

Cataclysmic Eruption

Caldera Collapse

The volcano and land mass above a magma chamber is supported, in part, by the magma itself. As a significant volume of magmatic material is displaced by the eruption, a volcanic summit forms. Vertical fissures formed beneath the summit (below) advance the collapse and subsidence of the displaced volume of erupted material. A conical ring of pumice and ash surround the collapsed summit.

Caldera Collapse

New Caldera

After the ash settles, and the magmatic system finds a new isostatic equilibrium, the remaining surface depression is the newly formed caldera. In the depiction below, ground water interacts with hot deposits causing eruptions of steam.

New Caldera

Caldera Lake

The depression fills with precipitation to become a lake (below). Over time, renewed eruptions from vents in the caldera might form an island in the lake. Wizard Island is a cinder cone that formed an island in Crater Lake.

Caldera Lake

REFERENCES

• Caldera, Wikipedia.
• Crater Lake, Wikipedia.
• Crater Lake, Oregon, Wikipedia.
• Pyroclastic Flow, Wikipedia.
• 42 of the World’s Most Beautiful Crater Lakes.
• Some fundamentals about Crater Lakes. 
• The Science of Volcanic Lakes, by Greg Pasternack, 1996.