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Mount St Helens

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Chapter 3, as well as the article “A Fresh Look at Mount St. Helens” is very interesting. Chapter 3, section 1 covers the Earth as a system, the structure of the Earth, and Earth affects like earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions like the one on May 18th, 1980 in Washington State. Mount St. Helens was once covered with vegetation and small ponds. It has been nearly thirty years since one of the largest eruptions ever observed. The explosion blew the side of Mount St. Helens and lasted nine hours. This article relates to chapter three a lot. This volcanic eruption transformed the landscape and environment extremely. Mount St. Helen was once 9,677 feet tall and after the violent eruption it trimmed 400 meters off the top.This eruption damaged enough …show more content…

The solid part of the Earth consist of solid rocks and soil. The Earths surface is the geosphere. The hydrosphere makes up all of the water on Earth's surface. The Earth is divided into three layers the crust, mantle, and the core. The crust is very brittle and this is why it was easy for Mount St. Helen to blow it to pieces. Tectonic plates are what glides underneath the underlying asthenosphere. This is what causes mountains to shift or grow. This can affect when volcanoes erupt. Volcanos are located near tectonic plate boundaries, where plates either collide or separate.
A volcano is a mountain built when magma rises from Earth's interior to the surface of the Earth.Volcanoes erupt when the pressure of the melted rock inside becomes so high that it blows through the solid surface of volcano. This explosion leads to many economic difficulties just like it did when Mount St. Helen exploded. It is a devastating event and clouds of ash, dust, and gases flowed into the environment. These fumes can be difficult to breath in and the damage it can cause wildlife is also …show more content…

Before the Mount St. Helens explosion, there were fifteen amphibian species in the area. The eruption wiped them all out. There were no signs of amphibians until three years after the incident. Finally two species were found. The western toad and the Pacific tree frog. Today, life has returned stronger than before. Scientist have counted more than one hundred fifty species of wildflowers, shrubs, and trees. There is an average of ten new plant species each year. The six square miles of land that was once covered with ash and completely dead, is now covered with life and has willows as tall as fifteen feet

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