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February 19, 2011

Lake Toba Eruption

The 70,000+ years ago volcanic eruption of the supervolcano Lake Toba, the largest volcanic lake in the world, located in Sumatra, an island of Indonesia, may have nearly brought an extinction to humans. It created a population bottleneck that supposedly altered humans' genetic inheritance. It's also believed that there were only 15,000 people left after the eruption.

Also being believed to have been Earth's largest explosive eruption in the last 25 million years, the Lake Toba eruption also caused a big climate change. There had been a volcanic winter worldwide with temperatures that were decreased by 3 to 5 degrees Celsius, even up to 15 higher up north.

In the lake, there are four cones, four stratovolcanoes, and three craters that have been visible. There are a couple of other volcanoes as well, which include caldera and lava domes.

On a slightly unrelated note, Lake Toba is also the largest lake in Indonesia, measuring 30 kilometres is width and 100 kilometres in length.


[Image: gotraveltogether.blogspot.com]

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