Location: 15.78 S, 71.85 W
Summit Elevation: 5967 m Rocks, folded and faulted, make up the Andes Mountains and many other hundreds of volcanoes. These volcanoes have little information on their past activity as they are in high and dry places. Sabancaya is the youngest compared to its two neighbours being the middle and smallest of three glacier-topped stratovolcanoes in the Peruvian Andes. Besides this point, Sabancaya has to be younger that its neighbours as two large dark lava flows are on its east side. However, when it started to erupt in December 1986, no historic activity about the eruption was known. Eruption is the process by which solid, liquid, and gaseous materials are ejected into the earth's atmosphere and onto the earth's surface by volcanic activity. They range from the quiet overflow of liquid rock to the tremendously violent expulsion of pyroclastics.
During the next 18 months of eruption, a volcanic dome was built in the summit crater. A volcanic dome is a steep-sided mass of viscous (doughy) lava extruded from a volcanic vent (often circular in plane view) and spiny, rounded, or flat on top. Its surface is often rough and blocky as a result of fragmentation of the cooler, outer crust during growth of the dome.
Strange enough, no people were harmed when the volcano erupted and the strong wind blew volcanic ash and gases that somehow poisoned and killed cattle. This is a very strange yet interesting volcanic eruption.
Bibliography
volcano.oregonstate.edu
Shanaka L. de Silva and Peter W. Francis (1991) Volcanoes of the Central Andes. Springer-Verlag, Berlin; , p. 26-28.
