National Parks Across The Planet - 2117 Words

Wonder, vastness, unsullied nature, and untouched beauty: all words that describe national parks across the planet. One such place, a series of islands about 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador, became officially recognized as an Ecuadorian National Park in 1959, and later a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979 (Galapagos Islands Geology Volcanoes, n.d.). None other than the Galapagos Islands themselves, the park is perhaps one of, if not the most captivating National Parks on the globe. When one hears â€Å"Galapagos Islands,† the ecological diversity is often the first association brought to mind. While it holds true that the islands contain possibly one of the most diversified bionomics in the world, its geological history is just as†¦show more content†¦The Ecuadorian archipelago sits entirely on the Nazca tectonic plate, a continental plate constantly subjected to volcanic and tectonic activity. While the plate endlessly drifts east-southeast, it encounters the Gal apagos hot spot, a source of intense and relentless volcanic activity in the ocean. According to White (1997), large columns of torrid rock approximately 100 kilometers in diameter, called mantle plumes, emerge from the mantle at a rate of an estimated ten centimeters per year. A peculiar interaction occurs with these plumes; once they rise from the lower asthenosphere to the upper lithosphere, the plumes actually melt by approximately twenty percent from the sheer force of pressure decompression rather than heat, as the lithosphere is cooler than the asthenosphere. This melting begins at roughly 150 kilometers in depth, and continues rising until the process is halted by reaching the lithosphere; the resulting magma rises into collections in and immediately beneath the lithosphere, named magma chambers. When the conditions are ideal, these chambers can release their magma onto the surface in an explosive attempt to equalize density and pressure, colloquially known as a volcanic eru ption (White, 1997). Consecutive eruptions like these over hundreds of thousands of years cause the actual formation of a volcano; furthermore, over time, magma can crystallise in the magma chamber causing a thickening of the chamber, and thus an addition