The Eruption Of Mount Saint Helens

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Boom! A once ice-capped mountain peak explodes as ash fills the air. “‘Vancouver, Vancouver, this is it!’”Those were the last words of expert geologist David Johnston (Gunn 561). In 1980, Mount Saint Helens of the state of Washington erupted, filling the air with ash and causing mudflows powerful enough to lift tons. It decimated everything in its path. The eruptions, mudflows, and ash caused great damage on the landscape, yet it gave us information on how catastrophes happen and how they affect society and the surrounding landscape. The data acquired can also help us understand the way the landscape was formed. Mount Saint Helens caused much damage, but also helped people understand the science behind it.
The eruption on Mount Saint Helens has a specific cause and comes with many effects. A multifold of people would say that the “mountain looked like the site of an atomic blast” (Bredeson 30). That is a very accurate depiction as it took great power to inflict as much damage as it did. The reason for this impressive amount of force is that when magma is built up with pressure and an earthquake hits, the pressure gets magnified and the volcano explodes (Lewis). This is exactly what happened inside Mount Saint Helens. Furthermore, it has been revealed that “The earthquake that triggered the explosion was a 5.2 on the Richter scale” (Gunn 559). The earthquake to the magma can be compared as a match to gasoline. Even though the earthquake was not huge, the scale of the eruption was much greater than that of the earthquake (Gunn 560). The earthquake was only the trigger that allowed for more devastating things to occur. Thirteen hundred feet of the volcano were lost in the explosion followed by landslides, mudslides, and lava flows...

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...hes thick (Austin). As a matter of fact, all of this happened in a short period compared to previous thought time frames. The peat was both compositionally and texturally similar to certain coal beds in the eastern United States. On the other hand, coal has been thought to take a thousand years an inch to form (Austin).This challenged many prior theories and conclusions and helped benefit a better understanding of how geography and landscape can be changed.
In conclusion, this powerful event tore the landscape, obliterated the geography, and had a colossal impact on the environment and the way that people observed data. These examples of explosions, mudslides and ash helped make improvements towards the future and understandings of past events. Even though Mount Saint Helens destroyed the landscape, it built a better understanding of human knowledge.

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