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We tend to perceive land as quite a stable entity, considering it’s where we primarily live our lives.
And to realize that the ground is perpetually shifting can be somewhat disconcerting. Nonetheless, the truth is land is in constant flux — quite possibly more so than at the Kumani Bank mud volcano, also referred to as Chigil-Deniz, located approximately 15 miles (25 km) off the coast of Azerbaijan in the Caspian Sea.
The NASA Earth Observatory has published a collection of images captured with the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and OLI-2 instruments onboard the Landsat 8 and 9 satellites, showcasing the formation and erosion of a new island.
In the initial image from November 2022, the underwater mud volcano is firmly submerged, with no visible land rising above the sea. Following an eruption in early 2023, however, an island emerges at the surface, its plume of sediment extending for miles.
The island depicted in the second image likely developed between January 30 and February 4, 2023, with an approximate width of 1,300 feet (400 meters) at its apex. Yet, in a span of less than two years, that island has been eroded by the sea to just a small point — little remains in the third image, dated to the end of 2024.
This isn’t the first occurrence of the Kumani Bank’s ghost island appearing and vanishing, as noted in a statement from NASA’s Earth Observatory. The mud volcano has recorded eight other eruptions, beginning from May 1861, when the island formed was merely 285 feet (87 meters) wide and 11.5 feet (3.5 meters) above the water. The largest island emerged after an eruption in 1950, measuring 2,300 feet (700 meters) wide and 20 feet (6 meters) high.
Mark Tingay, a geologist from the University of Adelaide, referred to mud volcanoes as “strange and remarkable formations that remain largely unexplored and poorly understood,” during a seminar for the Geological Society of Australia. They develop in areas where pressure beneath the surface compels hot fluids, gases, and sediments to surge upward.
Earth has an unusually high concentration of these formations in Azerbaijan — over 300 can be found around and off the eastern coastline of the country, where the Kumani Bank is situated.
Moreover, we’ve also identified similar features on Mars. Researchers believe that circular mounds observed in the northern lowlands of the Red Planet bear similarities to mud volcanoes on Earth.
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