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Earth’s Lava-Spewing Volcanoes, Calving Glaciers, and Other Worlds of Fire and Ice

Earth’s Lava-Spewing Volcanoes, Calving Glaciers, and Other Worlds of Fire and Ice

By Lindsey Olander

July 13, 2015

Credit: Joan Myers

Volcanic eruptions, just as the melting of ice shelves and glaciers, signify changes in Earth’s life cycle—some make headlines while others remain unseen by human eyes…yet our planet ages on. “A stable earth, whatever we would like to think, is an illusion," says Santa Fe–based photographer Joan Myers, who embarked on a tour of the planet’s contrasting formations, from Hawaii’s fiery Kilauea Volcano to the steaming, snow-covered Mount Erebus in Antarctica to Oregon’s pollen-covered Crater Lake.

Her latest photo portfolio, Joan Myers: Fire and Ice, Timescapes (Damiani), juxtaposes these contrasting backdrops, of volcanic zones and desolate ice worlds found at the far reaches of the earth. Read on for her photographic portfolio of Earth’s polarized, shape-shifting landscapes.

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Credit: Joan Myers

Haleakala on Mau’i, Hawai’i, is part of a massive shield volcano that forms the eastern three-fourths of Mau’i. Its last eruption is thought to have been in the 17th century.

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Credit: Joan Myers

Aerial view of a lava tube on Kilauea Volcano, Hawai’i.

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Credit: Joan Myers

Merapi Volcano, Java, Indonesia.

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Credit: Joan Myers

Cotopaxi Volcano, Ecuador.

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Credit: Joan Myers

Ice towers formed by steam vents on the slopes of Mount Erebus, Antarctica.

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Credit: Joan Myers

Zavodovsky, the northernmost of the South Sandwich Islands, is a bleak, uninhabited, volcanic nub bin, largely covered in snow and ice. Only three miles across, it is dominated by an active stratovolcano, Mount Asphyxia, and is home to one of the largest chinstrap penguin colonies in the world, about a million pairs.

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Credit: Joan Myers

The Seltún geothermal field near Krýsuvík, Iceland.

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Credit: Joan Myers

The spectacular Cueva de los Verdes on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands is part of an extensive lava tube system over 3.7 miles long, with an additional 0.93 miles under the sea. This cave measures more than 45 feet in diameter and was used during the 16th and 17th centuries by the local population to hide from the European pirates and Muslim slave raiders who periodically attacked the island.

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Credit: Joan Myers

Easter Island, one of the world’s most isolated islands, developed over the last 750,000 years as an overlapping of three shield volcanoes—each with a summit caldera—rising from a submarine mountain range. The crater in the background, Rano Raraku, has been extensively quarried for the tuff, or consolidated volcanic ash, used for most of the moai (monolithic sculptures) placed around the island.

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Credit: Joan Myers

Marine iguanas (Amblyrhynchus cristatus) basking on the volcanic rock of Fernandina Island, Galapagos. In his 1839 Journal and Remarks, commonly known as The Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin noted Species on different islands vary in color and size.

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Credit: Joan Myers

Pollen floating on the surface of Crater Lake in Oregon. Crater Lake formed as a result of the collapse of Mount Mazama in a cataclysmic eruption about 7,700 years ago. The eruption sent ash over much of the western United States and southwestern Canada.

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Credit: Joan Myers

Lava Butte, a 500-foot cinder cone, is part of Newberry Volcano in Oregon. Like other cinder cones nearby, it was formed by a single eruption about seven thousand years ago. In July 1966, twenty-two astronauts trained here for upcoming Moon landings.

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Credit: Joan Myers

A ringed seal in Croker Bay off the southern coast of Devon Island in the eastern high Arctic.

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Credit: Joan Myers

Halema’uma’u Crater, on the summit of the Kilauea Volcano, is said to be the home of Pele, the tempestuous volcano goddess of ancient Hawaiian legends. Her legendary beauty and anger are celebrated in numerous songs and chants.

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Credit: Joan Myers

Vent in the crater of La Grande Soufrière Volcano, Guadeloupe.

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