November 25, 2012

SULFUR




The Ijen volcano complex is a group of stratovolcanoes in East Java, Indonesia. It is inside a larger caldera Ijen, which is about 20 kilometers wide. The Gunung Merapi stratovolcano is the highest point of that complex. West of Gunung Merapi is the Ijen volcano, which has a one-kilometer-wide turquoise-colored acid crater lake. The lake is the site of a labor-intensive sulfur mining operation, in which sulfur-laden baskets are carried by hand from the crater floor. Many other post-caldera cones and craters are located within the caldera or along its rim. The largest concentration of post-caldera cones forms an E-W-trending zone across the southern side of the caldera. The active crater at Kawah Ijen has an equivalent radius of 361 meters, a surface of 41 × 106 square meters. It is 200 meters deep and has a volume of 36 × 106 cubic meters.
-Wikipedia