The lava spewed out by the Cumbre Vieja volcano in the Canary Islands archipelago continues to sink into the sea on the west coast of the island of La Palma, already forming an advance of several tens of hectares.
Satellite images from Copernicus, the European Union’s Earth observation program, show a D-shaped molten tongue of rock, which already measures nearly 338 hectares.
According to Fernando Tuya, researcher in biodiversity and conservation at the University of Las Palmas in Gran Canaria, the first effects of the entry of lava into the sea are “devastating” with “the direct death of organisms that are going to be buried” under the casting.
But in the longer term, this could constitute a “good news“for marine life which could be” enriched “by it.
“The lava will form a rocky platform which will be a substrate for many marine species that will be able to colonize it in the future, that is to say in three to five years”, continues this scientist, according to whom the phytoplankton could also be enriched by the iron contained in the magma.
Nearly two thousand hectares of land are also already covered with ash on the island. And 17,000 tons of sulfur dioxide are released every day by the volcano.
However, the authorities want to be reassuring at this stage about the quality of the air.
Yesterday, farmers on the island were allowed to join farms outside the security perimeter to collect bananas, one of La Palma’s main resources, or to irrigate crops.
Air links with the island of La Palma have also returned to normal.
But the authorities are on alert because the wind direction could change in the coming hours, which would bring the toxic plumes towards the shore and further inland.
Reference-feedproxy.google.com