Volcanoes

   Having a country near tectonic plates raises the chance or experiencing some of the most amazing natural hazards in my opinion, Volcanoes. I’ve always loved and had a deep passion for this kind of hazards, it si a mix of fear and breathtaking of its greatness.

     Volcanoes are an opening for the inner part of the earth that create a vent for the magma to escape. They a result of the earth crust friction and submerging under one another causing the rock to melt, and they are usually formed where the plates meet ( 90% of the volcanoes are located in the ring of fire). While the crust is going down it releases heat and other earth elements from the melting rocks, which create a pressure chamber under the earth surface and then it starts to expand, and start to push upward on the earth surface. This process shapes the surface to create the shape of the volcano. Once the chamber can no longer hold the pressure it explodes/erupted and the lava ( the melting rock) escape to form a new land.

    As on my earthquakes blog, we learned that Morocco is on the central north edge of the African plate. This location allows the country to experience a transformed fault between the Eurasian and the African plate. Due to the plates activity in the thousands years ago, volcanism occurred in the Alboran Sea (West and East basins), between Morocco and Spain, and over to the South Balearic Basin. They are now dormant, but millions of years ago was an area of intense volcanic activity, and that was part of the shifting and friction when the earth was moving around and about. The known volcanoes present in Morocco are few and most of them are extinct. However, the El Arraiche mud volcano field is currently active on the Moroccan Atlantic slope that consists of 8 mud volcanoes in water depths from 200 to 700m .  http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025322705001301

    There are also volcanic flows in the High Atlas mountains of Morocco associated with the geologic CAMP event - CAMP (Central Atlantic Magmatic Province) was an incredibly massive eruption of flood-basalt type lava that occurred only a few million years after Pangaea began to break up. It covered 10 million square kilometers, leaving its products on 4 continents: North and South America, southwest Europe, and west Africa. The flows of the High Atlas Mountains, are associated with Moroccan Meseta eruptions at roughly millions of years ago as well.
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091204113057AA8bHAd 

v  Note : The Atlas Mountains are the largest and most important mountain range in North Africa, extending from Morocco to Tunisia for about 2,400 kilometers (1,488 miles) in a series of creased mountain chains. Morocco's portion of the Atlas Mountains includes the Middle Atlas, High Atlas, and Anti-Atlas.  http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/geography/Morocco-to-Slovakia/Morocco.html#ixzz4tLjIsnzo

     The remainder of the massive volcanoes that erupted during the Pangea is in the Anti-Atlas range. The Jbel ( means mountain in Arabic) Siroua South of the Atlas, a volcanic outcropping and a ridge of black lava that connects the High Atlas and Anti-Atlas. Siroua mountain is a stratovolcano, also known as a composite volcano, is a conical volcano built up by many layers (strata) of hardened lava, tephra, pumice, and volcanic ash. Unlike shield volcanoes, stratovolcanoes are characterized by a steep profile and periodic explosive eruptions and effusive eruptions. And another one would be Jbel Saghro are two of these ancient volcanoes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratovolcano

     There is also a complex of a dozen volcanoes south of Azrou and Ifrane in the Middle Atlas region ( in the central region of Morocco) Jbel El Koudiate, Jbel Tamarrakoit, Jbel Outgui ; these extinct shield volcano usually built almost entirely of fluid lava flows. They are named for their low profile, the three main volcanic structures of the region. The most famous of these volcanoes is Michlifen, which is better known now for its ski station where tourist and locals visit each in winter.

    Since then Morocco never saw or recorded another volcanic eruption, in fact, most of the population don’t know that the country did experience volcanoes millions of years ago. The next picture is an explanation and details of the different component that goes into a volcano.

   And if you are a visual person and want to see how all the stages unfold watch the video, it is really interesting and I hope it will raise your passion for volcanoes as me because as much as destructive they can be sometimes, as much they are awesome and vital for new lands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgktM2luLok