Top Trumps Volcanoes Card Game

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No two volcanoes are completely alike. They can vary in the size and style of their eruptions. Some eruptions can go on for days, months or even years. Some can be over in a matter of minutes. Even at the same volcano, no two eruptions are completely alike. You can find a useful description of the different kinds of eruption at volcano world. Nonetheless, some volcanoes (like Yasur) erupt in pretty much the same way each time, and some can have a much bigger variation between eruptions (like Vesuvius). In our unpredictability category, we wanted to explore this.

Krakatau is a major caldera volcano, that lies in the sea to the west of Java, Indonesia. It is one of the many active volcanoes of the Sunda Arc, which is forming as a result of the subduction of the Australian plate beneath the Sunda plate. Krakatau is not the only volcano of this chain to have erupted with devastating consequences. Toba, to the north, was responsible for the largest known eruption of the past 100,000 years; while Tambora and Rinjani, to the south east, had major eruptions in 1815 and 1257, both of which may have had global consequences. View of the northern side of Ngauruhoe, New Zealand. Wikimedia commons: By The Bearded Man (Own work) [ CC-BY-SA-3.0]An animated conversation about how great it would be turned into an enthusiastic letter to Top Trumps Towers (yes, really!) which turned into a phone call, which turned into a visit and ….. eventually….. the full blown card game. Beautiful image of a typical strombolian explosion at Yasur volcano, Tanna island, Vanuatu. Credit: Derya Gürer (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)

Unpredictability– 26. Mayon has a long history of small to moderate eruptions, so this score is relatively low. Unpredictability An index from 0 to 100 that relates to the relative variability of activity at that volcano. We used this category to find a way to express the ‘range’ of activity that a volcano has, in numbers. It is essentially an expression the range of sizes of activity and its frequency of eruption. A volcano that erupts relatively often but with little change in the style or size of activity is more predictable than one capable of producing a wide range of eruptions. An example of a low scoring ( relatively predictable) volcano is Stromboli. In the STREVA Project we are working to improve the way in which monitoring data can provide additional warnings of that activity. There is a blog here about one piece of research that looked at how satellites might improve the way we can detect early signs of activity. The stratovolcano of Nevado del Ruiz is one of several subduction-related volcanos in our collection. It is in Colombia (South America) and is in the northern most part of the Andean Volcanic Arc, formed by the subduction of the Nazca plate under the South American plate. Devastation Potential– 231. Erebus is a large volcano, quite close to McMurdo sound, and one of the largest scientific research stations in Antarctica. Although it has only ever been seen to have minor eruptions, it has certainly had larger eruptions in the past. Vesuvius– one of the best known volcanoes in the world – has been dormant since its last eruption in 1944. It looms over the sprawling city of Naples, in central Italy, and is watched closely by scientists from the Osservatorio Vesuviano– the world’s oldest volcano observatory.Devastation Potential– 684. Santorini is a large caldera volcano, with a well known history of large and damaging eruptions and, on geological timescales, this will probably happen again.

Devastation Potential– 320. The next eruption of Fuji could certainly cause widespread disruption, particularly if winds blow ash across Tokyo. Erebus is an enigma. It is the most southerly active volcano in the world, located on Ross island in Antarctica. For at least the past 40 years, there has been a lava lake bubbling in the summit crater, and feeding a continuous plume of gases across the Antarctic continent. We used the Smithsonian Institution Global Volcanism Program Eruptive Record calculate the average size (VEI) of eruptions, and multiplied it by the range of that number. We also factored in the number of eruptions that it has had. This way, a volcano that has had a lot of eruptions all of the same size will have a low unpredictability, while a volcano that is less well known and may have had both large and small eruptions will have a high unpredictability.You could use them to support your teaching on volcanoes in various ways. Children could play a top trumps game with the cards whereby they would each need to choose a stat from their topmost card - such as height - and whoever has the highest volcano takes the other player's lower cards and wins that round. This is a fantastic way to help children retain key facts in a way that is both fun and gets everyone participating together.