Nea Kameni is a small, uninhabited

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

island An island or isle is a piece of land, distinct from a continent, completely surrounded by water. There are continental islands, which were formed by being split from a continent by plate tectonics, and oceanic islands, which have never been ...

of volcanic origin located in the

Aegean Sea The Aegean Sea is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea between Europe and Asia. It is located between the Balkans and Anatolia, and covers an area of some . In the north, the Aegean is connected to the Marmara Sea, which in turn con ...

, within the flooded

Santorini caldera Santorini caldera is a large, mostly submerged caldera, located in the southern Aegean Sea, 120 kilometers north of Crete in Greece. Visible above water is the circular Santorini island group, consisting of Santorini (known as Thera in antiquity) ...

. Nea Kameni (new burnt) and the neighbouring small island Palea Kameni (old burnt) have formed over the past two millennia through repeated eruptions of

dacite Dacite () is a volcanic rock formed by rapid solidification of lava that is high in silica and low in alkali metal oxides. It has a fine-grained (aphanitic) to porphyritic texture and is intermediate in composition between andesite and rhyolite. ...

lava and ash. The Roman historian

Cassius Dio Lucius Cassius Dio (), also known as Dio Cassius ( ), was a Roman historian and senator of maternal Greek origin. He published 80 volumes of the history of ancient Rome, beginning with the arrival of Aeneas in Italy. The volumes documented the ...

records in the year 47 CE "This year a small islet, hitherto unknown, made an appearance close to the island of Thera." Cassius' report may refer to Palaia Kameni.

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vesp ...

reported the emergence of a new island on July 8, in the year of the consulship of M. Junius Silanus and L. Balbus, thus 19 CE. Major eruptions over the past 300 years took place in 1707–1712, 1866–1870, 1925–1928, and 1939–1941. The last small eruption happened in 1950 and involved

lava dome In volcanology, a lava dome is a circular, mound-shaped protrusion resulting from the slow extrusion of viscous lava from a volcano. Dome-building eruptions are common, particularly in convergent plate boundary settings. Around 6% of eruptions ...

extrusion. Nea Kameni is nearly round, and has a

diameter In geometry, a diameter of a circle is any straight line segment that passes through the centre of the circle and whose endpoints lie on the circle. It can also be defined as the longest Chord (geometry), chord of the circle. Both definitions a ...

of approximately 2 kilometers and an

area Area is the measure of a region's size on a surface. The area of a plane region or ''plane area'' refers to the area of a shape or planar lamina, while '' surface area'' refers to the area of an open surface or the boundary of a three-di ...

of 3.4 km². It is monitored closely by scientists from the Institute for the Study and Monitoring of the Santorini Volcano (ISMOSAV), Institute for the Study and Monitoring of the Santorini Volcano
Retrieved 2009-05-17 and is a protected scientific site. The island has many vents, one of which is an active

sulfur Sulfur ( American spelling and the preferred IUPAC name) or sulphur ( Commonwealth spelling) is a chemical element; it has symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms ...

vent, named Jorgo (George), as well as a carpet of red grassy

succulents In botany, succulent plants, also known as succulents, are plants with parts that are thickened, fleshy, and engorged, usually to retain water in arid climates or soil conditions. The word ''succulent'' comes from the Latin word ''sucus'', meanin ...

on the thin soil in the summertime. The active vent was named by the locals after King

George I of Greece George I ( Greek: Γεώργιος Α΄, romanized: ''Geórgios I''; 24 December 1845 – 18 March 1913) was King of Greece from 30 March 1863 until his assassination on 18 March 1913. Originally a Danish prince, George was born in Copenhage ...

, as the vent was active the day after the King visited Santorini. The nearly barren island is visited daily by dozens of tourist boats throughout the summer. Visitors climb a gravel path to reach the top of the 130-meter-high volcanic

crater A crater is a landform consisting of a hole or depression (geology), depression on a planetary surface, usually caused either by an object hitting the surface, or by geological activity on the planet. A crater has classically been described ...

, where it is possible to complete a full circuit of the rim.

References

External links

Nea Kameni Virtual Tour
Volcano 360 Panorama Virtual Tour in High Resolution *Dead link* {{Aegean Sea Santorini Volcanoes of Greece Volcanoes of the Aegean Uninhabited islands of Greece Landforms of Thira (regional unit) Islands of the South Aegean Islands of Greece