What is a Mud Volcano?

About Mud Volcano:

• It is a small volcano-shaped cone of mud and clay, of height usually less than a few meters and often a few decimeters.
• The craters are usually shallow and may intermittently erupt mud.
• These eruptionscontinuously rebuild the cones, which are eroded relatively easily.
• Some mud volcanoes are created by hot spring activity where large amounts of gas and small amounts of water react chemically with the surrounding rocks and form boiling mud. 
  • Variations are the porridge pot (a basin of boiling mud that erodes chunks of the surrounding rock) and the paint pot (a basin of boiling mud that is tinted yellow, green, or blue by minerals from the surrounding rocks).
• Other mud volcanoes, entirely of a nonigneous origin, occur only in oil-field regions that are relatively young and have soft, unconsolidated formations.
  • Under compactional stress, methane and related hydrocarbon gasesmixed with mud force their way upward and burst through to the surface, spewing mud into a conelike shape.
  • Because of the compactional stress and the depth from which the mixture comes, the mud is often hot and may have an accompanying steam cloud.
• Mud volcanoes are not real volcanoes and are not as hazardous as real volcanoes since they can only emit warm mud and only very locally (a few hundred meters around them). 
• The largest mud volcanoes actually do pose hazards, but not of the usual volcanic kind. Instead, the sheer volume of mud erupted can flood the landscape, displace people, and bury infrastructure and agriculture. 
• Approximately 1,000 mud volcanoes have been identified on land and in shallow water.
  • In Europe and Asia, mud volcanoes are known to exist in southeastern Ukraine,Italy, Romania, Azerbaijan, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, and China.
  • In North and South America, mud volcanoes have been documented in Alaska, California, the Island of Trinidad, Venezuela, and Colombia.

Q1: Is there any mud volcano in India?

One of the most famous mud volcanoes in India is located on Baratang Island, which is part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Tinsukia District in Assam is another location where mud volcanoes have been found. These are located in the Namrup and Makum areas.There are reports of mud volcanoes in certain parts of Arunachal Pradesh, though they are not as prominent or well-documented as those in Assam and the Andaman Islands.

Source:LM