Name: Campi Flegrei: Italy’s Underground Super Volcano
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In the shadow of Italy’s Vesuvius, a lesser-known volcano rumbles: Campi Flegrei. An eruption could endanger the millions of residents of the city of Naples.

In Italy hundreds of thousands of people are living directly on top of an active volcano.

Campi Flegrei: Italy’s Underground Super Volcano

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In the shadow of Italy’s Vesuvius, a lesser-known volcano rumbles: Campi Flegrei. An eruption could endanger the millions of residents of the city of Naples.

In Italy hundreds of thousands of people are living directly on top of an active volcano.

Nature

Campi Flegrei: Italy’s Underground Super VolcanoPublished: August 20, 2024Speaker 1: Vesuvius isn't the biggest or most powerful volcano in town. On the other side of the city, scientists have seen an alarming increase in volcanic activity. Pisciarelli, a vast fumarole, a vent of bubbling gas and mud. In recent years, it has grown larger and turned into a destroyer. A few hundred feet away, expert in volcanic risk, Antonio Costa, is visiting a deserted building. Inside the walls, and floors are covered in a thick layer of solidified ooze, and the air is filled with the acrid smell of sulfur. The volcanic vent has claimed the entire building. This hostile takeover began when gas from the vent punched holes through the floor and walls.Antonio Costa: Here you can even feel, if you put the hand here, it's terribly hot.Speaker 1: As the gas cools, it releases dissolved minerals. These stick together to form the thick volcanic scum, which is now consuming the entire house. So where is the volcano that is driving all this activity? The vent is in an area called Campi Flegrei, which is home to hundreds of thousands of people. At first glance, it's hard to spot the volcano unless you have a trained eye.Chris: Good?Speaker 5: Yeah.Chris: Okay.Speaker 5: Yeah.Speaker 1: To take a better look at the lay of the land Chris needs to take to the air, a monitor connected to a drone provides him with a bird's eye view of Campi Flegrei.Chris: So the first thing you notice from up in the air is as we come round to the shoreline towards the Bay of Naples, we start to pick up a prominent ridge line. It comes all the way round towards the main city center. It's clearly curved. And then within there, it's a very densely populated flat area here. This ridge line could be telling us something about a feature that is actually forming this landscape. An ancient, very large volcano, and in particular, we're actually looking at a caldera.Speaker 1: A caldera is a collapsed volcano. In the past, Campi Flegrei was a flat plane. Deep beneath was a huge reservoir of bubbling magma. Then the magma started moving upwards, smashing through weaknesses in the rock and erupting powerfully. But this left an empty void beneath the surface. With nothing left to support the weight of the plane, it collapsed downwards, forming a crater known as a caldera. Radioactive dating of rocks reveals that Campi Flegrei's caldera formed 15,000 years ago, and at nearly eight miles wide, it must have been created by an incredibly large and powerful eruption.

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Campi Flegrei: Italy’s Underground Super Volcano

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Support Provided By

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