noun
definition
The molten rock ejected by a volcano from its crater or fissured sides.
definition
Magma.
definition
A shade of red, named after the volcanic lava.
Examples of lavas in a Sentence
Architectural variety and solidity are favoured in the buildings of the city by a wealth of beautiful building stones of varied colours (limestones, sandstones, lavas, granites and marbles), in addition to which bricks and Roman tiles are employed.
The first eruptions piled up huge domes of lavas rich in soda, including the geburite-dacites and sOlvsbergites of Mount Macedon in Victoria, and the kenyte and tephrite domes of Dunedin, in New Zealand.
In the southern region of unfolded beds are found the lavas of the " harras " of Arabia, and in India the extensive flows of the Deccan Trap. In the central folded belt lie the great volcanoes, now mostly extinct, of Asia Minor, Armenia, Persia and Baluchistan.
The chlorite-schists are often of igneous derivation, such as ash-beds or fine lavas which have been metamorphosed.
Among these lavas is the "pipe" amygdaloid of which many blocks have been transported great distances down the Vaal river.
Between these two chains are round hills consisting of lavas or sometimes of volcanic tuffs, covered with the long silvery grass which also clothes vast prairies in Java and Sumatra.
Rhyolitic lavas frequently are more or less vitreous, and when the glassy matter greatly predominates and the; crystals are few and inconspicuous the rock becomes an obsidian; the chemical composition is essentially the same as that of granite; the difference in the physical condition of the two rocks is due to the fact that one consolidated at the surface, rapidly and under low pressures, while the other cooled slowly at great depths and under such pressures that the escape of the steam and other gases it contained was greatly impeded.
Basaltic lavas are reported to have been found in the Aldan region.
Geology.'--The Eastern Cordillera., which, however, is but little known, appears to consist, as in Bolivia, chiefly of Palaeozoic rocks; the western ranges of the Andes are formed of Mesozoic beds, together with recent volcanic lavas and ashes; and the lower hills near the coast are composed of granite, syenite and other crystalline rocks, sometimes accompanied by limestones and sandstones, which are probably of Lower Cretaceous age, and often covered by marine Tertiary deposits.
The lavas and ashes ejected by these volcanoes consist of liparite, dacite, andesite and basalt.
These rocks, which include some highly siliceous lavas, form part of the Eocene series that is so conspicuously displayed above Carlingford in Co.
In Rossel Island (Roua or Arova) occur crystalline schistose and volcanic rocks, and in Misima (St Aignan) limestones and lavas in addition.
Kerguelen Island is of undoubted volcanic origin, the prevailing rock being basaltic lavas, intersected occasionally by dikes, and an active volcano and hot springs are said to exist in the south-west of the island.
The Cainozoic volcanic history of New Zealand begins in the Oligocene, when the high volcanic domes of Dunedin and Banks Peninsula were built up. The Dunedin lavas including tephrites and kenytes correspond to the dacite eruptions in the volcanic history of Victoria.
The building up of these domes of lavas of intermediate chemical type was followed by the eruption of sheets of andesites and rhyolites in the Thames English Miles so Ioo 200 Cretaceous 'a '
Bauxite, probably derived from the decay of lavas, is found between Glenarm and Broughshane, associated with brown and red pisolitic iron-ores; both these materials are worked commercially.
But by far the most important of the Tertiary rocks are the volcanic lavas, agglomerates and ashes, which cover so much of the country.
The basic lavas are usually darker and denser than lavas of acid type, and when fused they tend to flow to great distances, and may thus form far-spreading sheets, whilst the acid lavas, being more viscous, rapidly consolidate after extrusion.
Dana introduced the term "as" for this rough kind of lava-stream, whilst he applied the term "pahoehoe" to those flows which have a smooth surface, or are simply wrinkled and ropy; these terms being used in this sense in Hawaii, in relation to the local lavas.
Thus the uplifted, dislocated and dissected lava sheets of the Yellowstone National Park in the Rocky Mountains on the east (about the headwaters of the Snake river) are associated with the older lavas,of the Columbian plains.
In the north, where dislocations have invaded the field of the horizontal Columbian lavas, as in south-eastern Oregon and north-eastern California, the blocks are monoclinal in structure as well as in attitude; here the amount of dissection is relatively moderate, for some of the fault faces are described as ravined but not yet deeply dissected; hence these dislocations appear to be of recent date.
The Cascade Range is in essence a maturely dissected highland, composed in part of upwarped Colombian lavas, in part of older rocks, and crowned with several dissected volcanoes, of which the chief are (beginning in the north) Mts Baker (Io,827 ft.), Rainier (14,363 ft.), Adams (12,470 ft.) and Hood (11,225 ft.); the first three in \Vashington, the last in northern Oregon- These bear snowfields and glaciers; while the dissected highlands, with ridges of very irregular arrangement, are everywhere sculptured in a fashion that strongly suggests the work of numerous local Pleistocene glaciers as an important supplement to preglacial erosion.
These beds, with intercalated lavas, form the mountainous west shore of Lough Mask, the east, like that of Lough Corrib, being formed of low Carboniferous Limestone ground.
Mauna Kea is not nearly so old as the Kohala Mountains, but there is no record of its eruption, nor have its lavas a modern aspect.
Eruptive rocks of supposed Cretaceous age are met with in these outer islands, but Tertiary and recent volcanic lavas are confined to the innermost arc. Halmahera lies outside these arcs.
Basic lavas, with andesites, trachytes, tuffs and agglomerates are the most common Scottish rocks of this period.
The present volcanoes lie along a line (with offshoots) which runs parallel to the west coast, but some distance to the east of the fissures from which the early Tertiary lavas were poured.
It is only in the more northerly part of the country that the pipes are filled with blue ground (or " kimberlite "), and that they are diamantiferous; but over a great part of Cape Colony have been discovered what are probably similar pipes filled with agglomerates, breccias and tuffs, and some with basic lavas; one, in particular, in the Riversdale Division near the southern coast, being occupied by a melilite-basalt.
Leucite and nepheline lavas are here abundant.
In the Siebengebirge the little crater of Roderberg, with its lavas and scoriae of leucite-basalt, is posterior to some of the Pleistocene river deposits.
The Carboniferous lavas of the Campsie and Fintry Hills and of the south of Dumfriesshire and Roxburghshire likewise rise in lines of bold escarpment.
Immense -sheets of dolerite, gabbro, or allied basic rocks indicate eruptive materials intruded as sills or poured out as lavas contemporaneously with the sedimentary formations among which they lie.
The Lower, with its abundant intercalated lavas and tuffs, extends continuously as a broad belt along the northern margin of the Central Plain, reappears in detached tracts along the southern border, is found again on the south side of the Uplands in Berwickshire and the Cheviot Hills, occupies a tract of Lorne (Oban and the vicinity) in Argyllshire, and on the north side of the Highlands underlies most of the low ground on both sides of the Moray Firth, stretches across Caithness and through nearly the whole of the Orkney Islands, and is prolonged into Shetland.
The lavas are usually porphyrites, which occur in sheets, with intercalated bands of volcanic tuff that are sometimes strongly felsitic. One of the vents by which such materials were ejected occurs in the Braid Hills on the south side of Edinburgh.
The actual vents which were the sites of the small volcanoes still remain distinct, and the erupted lavas form high ground in the middle of Ayrshire.
Over much of this region they owe their preservation largely to the mass of lavas poured over them in Tertiary time.
Occasional beds of tuff are intercalated among these lavas, and likewise seams of fine clay or shale which have preserved the remains of numerous land-plants.
Farther north nearly the whole of the depression is filled with lavas, tuffs and agglomerates, derived from the Tertiary and recent volcanoes which form the most striking feature of the Andes of Ecuador.
The lavas and ashes are for the most part andesitic.
All the rocks are of basalt and greyishtinted lavas, excepting some beds of upraised coral.
The commonest lavas are dolerites.
On the east side in North Glen Sannox Burn, they are associated with cherts, grits and dark schists with pillowy lavas, tuffs and agglomerates which, on lithological grounds, have been regarded as probably of the same age as the Arenig cherts and volcanic rocks in the south of Scotland.
Contemporaneous lavas, highly decomposed, are intercalated with this division on the north side of North Glen Sannox where the band is highly faulted.
The whole of this consists of tuffs and lavas, andesites prevailing in the west and rhyolites and dacites in the east.
After a long repose Ometepe also burst into renewed activity on the 19th of June 1883, when the lavas from a new crater began to overflow and continued for seven days to spread in various directions over the whole island.
Igneous rocks are not extensively developed; in Wales they form an important feature and occur in considerable thickness; they are represented by lavas of olivine-diabase and by contemporaneous tuffs which are traversed by later granite and quartz felsite.
In the Cambrian of Brittany there are acid lavas and tuffs.
The recent lavas of the still active volcanoes of the south are olivine-bearing hypersthene-andesite and basalt.'
The lavas and ashes which form these cones are mostly andesitic. Mud " volcanoes " occur upon the Makran coast, but it is doubtful whether these are in any way connected with true volcanic agencies.
The eastern ranges of the Bolivian Andes are formed of Palaeozoic rocks with granitic and other intrusions; the Western Cordillera consists chiefly of Jurassic and Cretaceous beds, together with the lavas and ashes of the great volcanoes; while the intervening plateau is covered by freshwater and terrestrial deposits through which rise ridges of Palaeozoic rock and of a series of red sandstones and gypsiferous marls of somewhat uncertain age (probably, in part at least, Cretaceous).