Eastern Russia’s Kizimen is a growing stratovolcano, like Shiveluch, its neighbor to the north. In this natural-color satellite image, volcanic debris covers the south and east slopes of Kizimen. A plume of gas and ash rises from the summit, while wind-blown ash obscures a lava flow on the eastern flank. Early-season snows cover the landscape surrounding the volcano. The snow provides an easy way to date volcanic activity—any visible debris avalanches or ashfall must have occurred after the last snowfall.
The image was acquired by the Advanced Land Imager (ALI) aboard the Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) satellite on October 26, 2011.
NASA image by Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon, using ALI data from the EO-1 Team. Caption by Robert Simmon.
